CeeCee
Underground Railroad Cinderella
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A Cinderella retelling with a young enslaved girl in the title role. On a Maryland plantation, CeeCee’s story doesn’t end with a prince, but a different type of rescue.
By author-to-watch Shana Keller and illustrated by Coretta Scott King Honor and NAACP Image Award winner Laura Freeman, this classic fairy tale reimagined is one you won’t soon forget.
CeeCee is a young enslaved girl growing up alongside the two spoiled daughters she must work for on a plantation in Maryland. She takes care of them, catering to their every whim and suffering their casual cruelty. She learns to read by listening to their lessons and stories with the threat of punishment if caught.
CeeCee receives help from the caring cook, Binty, and hope comes in the form of a different kind of escape. CeeCee chances everything for the possibility of a new life.
While many are familiar with the traditional Cinderella story, this retelling is sure to empower and uplift a new generation of young readers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In riveting prose, Keller pens an engaging "Cinderella" variation about a girl, enslaved in Maryland, for whom layered stories offer freedom. When the cruel, pale-skinned daughters of CeeCee's enslavers begin tutoring, brown-skinned CeeCee is beaten and locked away for even staring at a book's pages. But household cook Binty encourages the girl and shares a tale of "an underground, secret savior who helped free enslaved people—a knight named Moses." The story melds in CeeCee's dreams with "Cinderella," and she awakens with a plan to head north, for which she'll need a gown, a pair of gloves, and a fitting coat, objects she painstakingly acquires. Binty, in the fairy godmother role, supplies the child with an old pocket watch: "You must get to the river by midnight. Moses will be there." And it's by the river that the youth reveals her true name—written on a slip of paper by her mother—before learning Moses's real identity and setting forward to freedom. Freeman blends soft textures and vibrant colors to render largely domestic scenes in this immersive tribute to determination, community alliance, and self-knowledge. Contextualizing notes conclude. Ages 4–8.
