Guardian

Guardian
by Julius Lester

GUARDIAN by

Category:

Historical

Age Recommendation:

Grades 6+

Release Date: 10/28/08

Publisher: Amistad

Reviewed by:

Rating:

5 Stars

There was a dark time in the history of the United States when even the best-intentioned people bore silent witness

to the atrocities that were being committed by others. A time in which a person had to chose between honesty and

personal safety.

It is Tuesday afternoon, a hot summer day in 1946. By Friday night a crime will have been committed, two people

will be dead, and fourteen-year-old Ansel Anderson will be forever tormented by the events of that night and those

that followed.

Ansel lives in Davis, a small town deep in the South. The town was named after the most wealthy and influential

family in the area, the family now headed by Zeph Davis. Cap’n Davis has a way of employing his “negroes” in such

a way that they remain in debt to him, a legal form of slavery.

Everyone in Davis knows the rules of the social order. Black people are expected to address all whites

even the

children

as “ma’am” or “sir”, they are to move from the sidewalk when a white person is coming, and they are to

always be congenial. Even Ansel’s best friend, Willie, addresses him as Mister Ansel.

Ansel works in his father’s store, along with Willie. Bert Anderson is preparing Ansel to take over the store

someday, and to be a successful store owner he knows that Ansel has to start considering who he spends time with

and what the other people in town think of him. His mother Maureen feels differently. She doesn’t like the way the

townspeople act and doesn’t want her son to grow up with such narrow-minded influences. She has bigger dreams

for Ansel, and, along with Esther Davis, Cap’n Davis’s sister, she plants the seeds for Ansel to dream of a future

beyond Davis.

An unfortunate storm is brewing in Davis. Entitlement and anger are swelling in Zeph Davis the Third, the teenage

son of Cap’n Davis. But who would believe that the son of a wealthy white man could commit such a heinous act as

rape and murder when there was a negroe at the scene of the crime?

And even if they do believe, will anyone take the risk of speaking out?

GUARDIAN is an amazingly well-crafted story that grabs your attention and your heart from the very beginning.

Author Julius Lester has a way of pulling you along in such a way that you can feel the intensity building with every

word until the explosive finale. There is no sugar-coating to this story; it is real and it is raw and borne from a very

sad reality in our world.

If you can read and pass along one book this year, let it be GUARDIAN.