Have you ever felt as if you were being watched?
Our protagonist – whose name we don’t know – is a young girl
who works on a farm during the time of the Civil War. She feeds the cow and the
chickens, and she does daily farm chores: cleaning, gathering food, helping her
family.
She has a busy but quiet life. She sees Confederate soldiers
riding by on their horses one day: the war is going on, but she and her family
have food and their health and one another.
But she’s being watched. When she’s alone in the shed, she
can feel an eye trained on her. Whose eye is this? Who would hide behind picked
corn stalks? And why is this person in her family’s shed?
There are no words in this book, but this is a powerful
story called Unspoken: A Story from the Underground Railroad by Henry Cole.
Unspoken: A Story from the Underground Railroad by Henry
Cole. Unpaged, wordless. Scholastic: New York, 2012. Booktalk to K-3. Would
work especially well for students learning about the Civil War. 2012 New York
Times Best Illustrated Children's Books Selection; 2012 Parents' Choice Award
for Picture Books Winner.
