Every Reader Has That Book.
It's a book that alters your life. It's the book that when someone asks you for the title of the series that has made the biggest impact, you utter its title. It's not necessarily the book that made you a reader. It can be.
That book, or series I should say, for me, is Mildred D. Taylor's Logan Family series. The series is a mix of novels and novellas, with the most well-known title being, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.
I read Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry in 8th grade. I can't remember what essays we may have been assigned, nor if there were tests, but I remember how the story opened my eyes to history and having a tightly knit Black family front and center. The main books are told through Cassie Logan's eyes, starting when she is 8 through her adult life. Other books in the series follow Cassie or other important characters.
Books are mirrors and windows, and I distinctly felt like I had hit a mirror, even though I'd never grown up as a young black girl in Mississippi during the Great Depression.
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry wasn't Taylor's first tale featuring the Logan Family. Song of The Trees was published in 1975, years before Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry would go on to win a Newberry.
Let The Circle Be Unbroken follows immediately after Roll.
The Road To Memphis
Collectively, To Kill A Mockingbird is concidered the 'Great American Novel.' But to me, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry should be in its place.
All The Days Past, All The Days Have Come is the final book in the saga. I was able to read an ARC of it before it came out. Finishing that book felt like saying goodbye to a piece of my family. When I finished it, my first thought was that's how you end a series.
If you haven't read the Logan Family Saga, I can't recommend it enough. I'm a careful reader, but my poor novels have been read so many times over the years that wear is starting to hit them.
Roll of thunder
Hear my cry
Over the water
Bye and bye
Ole man comin’
Down the line
Whip in hand to
Beat me down
But I ain’t
Gonna let him
Turn me around.
