Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom

A Caldecott Honor Book
A Coretta Scott King Award Winner

From a highly acclaimed author and bestselling artist comes a resounding, reverent tribute to Harriet Tubman, the woman who earned the name Moses for her heroic role in the Underground Railroad.

I set the North Star in the heavens and I mean for you to be free...

Born into slavery, Harriet Tubman hears these words from God one summer night and decides to leave her husband and family behind and escape. Taking with her only her faith, she must creep through woods with hounds at her feet, sleep for days in a potato hole, and trust people who could have easily turned her in. But she was never alone.

In lyrical text, Carole Boston Weatherford describes Tubman’s spiritual journey as she hears the voice of God guiding her north to freedom on that very first trip to escape the brutal practice of forced servitude. Tubman would make nineteen subsequent trips back south, never being caught, but none as profound as this first one. Courageous, compassionate, and deeply religious, Harriet Tubman, with her bravery and relentless pursuit of freedom, is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

Kadir Nelson is the illustrator of many books for children, including Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom by Carole Boston Weatherford, an NAACP Image Award winner, a Caldecott Honor Book, and a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award winner; and Ellington Was Not a Street by Ntozake Shange, a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award winner. He is also the author/illustrator of We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball, winner of the Coretta Scott King and Robert F. Sibert Awards, and I Have a Dream, a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor winner, among others. Kadir lives in Los Angeles, California. Visit him online at www.kadirnelson.com.