Elijah of Buxton: A Book Review

We listen to a lot of audio books.

In the car.  In the living room.  In the school room.  On the front porch.

We like words.  Stories.  Thoughts well-placed and well-spoken.

I choose the books we listen to in a variety of ways.  Often they are suggested by one of my favorite homeschooling websites – Ambleside.   Sometimes a friend suggests a good read.  Frequently, I simply look over the stockpile at the library whenever we visit and just pick the next interesting book that we haven’t listened to yet.

Elijah of Buxton fell into our laps in that manner.

I recognized the author’s name – Christopher Paul Curtis – from a novel we’d listened to and enjoyed a few years ago entitled Bud, Not Buddy.

This was a long listen.  It seemed to take weeks.  It was overdue at the library when we finally had a listening binge in the school room one night because we just had to hear how the story ended.

It was a beautifully delivered story based in truth and history about an unspeakable part of American history when black people were enslaved by white people.  The story takes place primarily in a town in Canada that offers respite and freedom and hope for former slaves and free black men and women and families.

Christopher Paul Curtis weaves a story powerfully with clever words and a myriad of quotable lines.  I’d love to re-read this one with the text in my own two hands because there was so much good I wanted to jot down in my little black book of quotes.

The story is serious and compelling yet funny and approachable.  Curtis writes as if the English language itself is his old friend.

The narrator of this particular version lends such warmth to the re-telling.  He is fabulous.  His dialect is impeccable and he reads with warmth and rhythm that makes the story alive.

The novel is told through the voice of a young boy named Elijah who was born free and lives in the settlement of Buxton. He is a character both endearing and charming and honest.  His words convey a tender, brave and clear insight into how children view us as adults and our style of communication and how our words  as grown ups can be complicated and confusing.  Elijah is, at the core, a young boy learning the language of grown ups in a world filled with struggle and beauty and trouble and hope.

Elijah is a perfect protagonist in a beautiful story.  He is heroic and fragile.  He finds himself in impossible circumstances that are at times rather intense for the young listener but worth the difficult conversations they produce after listening.