Booktalking Colorado - Full Booktalk Record

Booktalking Colorado Full Record:

	Title:	North by Night
	Author:	Ayers, Katherine
	Date Published:	1998
	Genre:	Adventure
	Grade Level:	5 - 7
	Booktalker:	Bonnie Phinney

Booktalk:
Have you ever felt so strongly about a cause that you were willing to risk everything - your friends, your family, and even your life - to stand up for what you believe? Most of us never have to. Sixteen-year-old Lucy Spencer has been helping her family on the Underground Railroad since she was twelve years old. Her story, which takes place in 1851, is told through her journal entries, but she must be very cautious when she writes of the fugitive slaves - so she writes in code. She writes of migrating birds that fly over her home, sometimes stopping to rest there. She's committed to their plight: "Even now, as I sit here safe and warm, I know that somewhere there are birds with torn and tattered feathers, birds who travel cold, with empty stomachs and tired wings. Birds in hidden nests, and birds, even now, in flight, heading north, always north," she writes. Lucy is torn - torn between the affections of two suitors, torn between her sense of justice and the easy way out, torn between her own religion and that of the Quaker families with whom she works on the railroad. Yearning for adventure, she jumps at the chance to stay with the widow Aurelia Mercer and help with a whole family of runaway slaves hiding in her attic. One of the fugitives, Cass, is pregnant, and not a whole lot older than Lucy herself. Between Cass and the surprisingly unconventional Aurelia, Lucy learns a lot about who she is and what is really important to her in life. The escape doesn't go exactly as planned, however, and now Lucy must make the most important decision of her life. What will she do when she is asked to make the ultimate sacrifice to save the life of one of her charges?