THE VERMONT READS BOOK OF 2007!

1910. Pownal, Vermont. At 12, Grace and her best friend Arthur must leave school and go to work as a "doffers" on their mothers' looms in the mill. Grace's mother is the best worker, fast and powerful, and Grace desperately wants to help her. But she's left handed and doffing is a right-handed job. Grace's every mistake costs her mother, and the family. She only feels capable on Sundays, when she and Arthur receive special lessons from their teacher. Together they write a secret letter to the Child Labor Board about underage children working in Pownal. A few weeks later a man with a camera shows up. It is the famous reformer Lewis Hine, undercover, collecting evidence for the Child Labor Board. Grace's brief acquaintance with Hine and the photos he takes of her are a gift that changes her sense of herself, her future, and her family's future.

Boldness and a gift for improvising verse enable eight-year old African American Daisy Turner to triumph over an incident of discrimination in her nineteenth century rural Vermont school. Told in Daisy's voice, the book's themes of identity and self-affirmation offer a powerful lesson to today's youngsters who face similar situations of prejudice and stereotyping in twenty-first century classrooms. Suggestions on the concluding page provide creative ways for young readers to develop their own storytelling style in verse.