STONEWALL JACKSON'S BLACK SUNDAY SCHOOL

This well-intentioned but incomplete biographical exploration looks at Stonewall Jackson’s years as a teacher with a strong humanitarian side, rather than his better-known years as a successful Confederate general. Jackson was a professor at Virginia Military Institute prior to the Civil War, but he also served as a teacher and the first superintendent of a Sunday school for African-American children, even though such instruction was illegal in that era in Virginia. The story is told in a straightforward and interesting style, but the text blocks are crowded into pages filled with large illustrations and are difficult to read. Hosegood’s loose, naïve-styled watercolor illustrations are the most successful aspect of the book. Concluding pages include a timeline of Jackson’s life, an additional list of facts about the general and the words to a well-known song of the era celebrating his life. Both the text and the timeline neglect to mention Jackson’s second wife and his daughter or that Jackson and his wife were slaveholders themselves. No historical reference sources are cited. (Picture book/biography. 5-8)