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    Elijah of Buxton
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    Elijah of Buxton
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    Elijah of Buxton
    Audiobook8 hours

    Elijah of Buxton

    Written by Christopher Paul Curtis

    Narrated by Mirron Willis

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Eleven-year-old Elijah is the first child born into freedom in Buxton, Canada, a settlement of runaway slaves just over the border from Detroit. He's best known in his hometown as the boy who made a memorable impression on Frederick Douglass. But things change when a former slave steals money from Elijah's friend, who has been saving to buy his family out of captivity in the South. Elijah embarks on a dangerous journey to America in pursuit of the thief, and he discovers firsthand the unimaginable horrors of the life his parents fled-a life from which he'll always be free, if he can find the courage to get back home.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateMar 11, 2008
    ISBN9780739364147
    Unavailable
    Elijah of Buxton

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    Reviews for Elijah of Buxton

    4/5

    379 ratings47 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This excellent book sheds light on a little-known facet of the Underground Railroad: what happened once the former slaves got to Canada. It's set in a real place not far from Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, a colony for former slaves founded by a white minister. The characters and plot are fictional but very believable. Elijah is a typical boy in many ways (can't recall his exact age but it's around 11), at least for the time (1859). He goes to school and Sunday school, does chores for his parents and neighbors, and hangs out with a friend. Elijah himself was born free in Canada, but many of his neighbors escaped leaving family behind in slavery. Their efforts to save enough money to buy husbands, wives and children, and the many things that can go wrong with their plans, form the plot. Elijah learns a lot about life and about himself during the course of his adventures. The book is written in a form of dialect as if Elijah, as narrator, is telling you his story. It's not difficult to understand nor is it demeaning in any way. I would recommend this book both to children (its intended audience) and adults.
    • 4/5
      It's 1860 and Elijah is the first free-born child in the settlement of Buxton in Canada and as such you would think he'd get a little respect, but instead everyone tells him how fragile he is and boy do they love to tell the story of how he threw up on Mr. Frederick Douglass even though Elijah was just a baby when it happened. Elijah enjoys his life - he has a best friend, Cooter, to get in trouble with, he gets to go rock fishing on his favorite mule, Old Flapjack, and he gets to work with Mr. Leroy helping to clear a neighbor's land. Now that he's almost 12, Elijah thinks it's about time people realize he's pretty much grown up even if some things are still pretty confusing. For one thing, his Ma tells him he "has to respect what growned folks say" one minute and the next she's telling him "not to believe some of the things growned folks tell" you. How's a boy to know which things are which? As the year goes on and Elijah learns more about the world outside of Buxton - especially about slavery, he starts to see that being grown up is much more complicated than he thought.
    • 5/5
      This is my favorite book of all time. No matter what I say this is a book that i would read over and over again. I think that most ofthe people that have read this book feel like it was a great book and that they would recomend it to anyone. I feel the same way that even if they are not a fan of this type of writing that they would at least enjoy this book. I especially liked how the author wrote the book the way that the people were talking. He didn't say them in a more formal way he used slang and if you didn't understand what it meant than sometimes you were completly lost. I liked that it sounded like it was being told by someone the stuff was actually happening too. If anyone asked me about that book I would tell them in my personal opinion it is the best thing that you will ever read if you read it.This book starts in the town of Buxton. It is a town that is mainly made up of slaves that went into Canada to escape slavery. Elijah was the first child in the town to have been born free. He is espacially scared of snakes and he really enjoys hanging around a man that people in the community call the preacher even though his family tells him to stay away from him. The Preacher's family is still enslaved in the south and he wants to be able to buy them back. He is so desperate to get them back he steals the money and leaves. Elijah sets off to find him and take the money that was stolen back. At the end of the book he finds the Preacher and is going to kill him, but he was too late and the Preacher is alrady dead.
    • 5/5
      Amazing book about a young boy living in a community of freed slaves in Canada. Contains some frightening and disturbing elements that make it more suitable for older elementary students.
    • 5/5
      This book is so breathtakingly beautiful that I'm at a loss to adequately write a review that would provide justice.Christopher Paul Curtis is fast becoming one of my favorite authors. A three-time Newbery award winner, his works shine like a bright beacon of hope for any aspiring writer. A 13-year assembly line worker in Flint Michigan, Curtis became a fledgling writer during breaks in the factory. With the encouragement of his wife, he took a year away from his job and spent his days in libraries writing and researching the background for his stories while learning how to submit his work to publishing companies.Never returning to the factory, he became a highly successful writer. His books Bud, Not Buddy, The Watsons Go To Birmington and Elijah of Buxton are filled with incredibly likeable characters you would love to meet. When reading his stories, the characters seem to jump off the pages and become vibrantly alive.Elijah of Buxton is set in pre Civil War 1860. Buxton Ontario provides the setting for the marvelous character of Elijah Freeman whose claim to fame is that he is the first child born free in the settlement.Buxton, Ontario was indeed an actual community in the Canadian wilderness founded by Rev. William King, a white man from Philadelphia, PA who was severely critical of slavery and empowered to put his feelings into actions.In all his books, Curtis deftly weaves historical fact with fictional characters. This marvelous book is packed full of humor, wit and seriousness. Without over bearing preaching and prostelytizing, Curtis paints a vivid portrait of the joy of freedom and the brutality of slavery.According to his mother, Elijah is a "fra-gile" child, quickly prone to tears and emotion. When The Right Rev. Zephariah W. Connerly III leaves Buxton with the money that Elijah's adult friend Mr. Leroy saved in order to purchase his family from slavery, Elijah's fragility is agumented with a keen sense of indignation and courage.Traveling with Mr. Leroy to America in search of the crooked scoundrel, Elijah witnesses the brutality of slavery and learns first hand the extreme horror his parents fled.In the end, Elijah keeps his wonderful fragility and learns that his sensitivity provides the strength needed when facing adversity.If you read one of my recommendations this year, please let it be this book!This is a powerful symphony of hope and a testimony to the power of the human soul striving to be alive and free!HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
    • 4/5
      From the cover and the jacket flap I wasn't sure how much I would enjoy this book. I was pleasantly surprised. My middle schoolers haven't really been checking it out/reading. It looks/sounds too "baby-ish" for them (or so they tell me...) I thought that the story was beautiful. It was interesting to see the main character grow and try to make sense of the "grown up" world. I think that Christopher Paul Curtis was wise to try and get across the horror and impact of slavery using a character who is similar to the readers...someone who may have heard about it but never actually SEEN what it was like, what it did to a person. The reader gains more of an understanding as Elijah does. Heartbreaking and hopeful at the same time.
    • 5/5
      Christopher Curtis' Elijah of Buxton interests me. This book is a great historical fiction on racism from a thrid person point of view.The theme in this story talks about courage. The courage of Elijah to face all his fears of failure or events. His best friend is now in misery caused by a former slave stealing his money for bringing his family out of captivity. He knows that his friend has waited long for all this money and is very important to him. He decides to go and help a friend when he is down. And off course his friend would have done the same for him. The point of view that this whole story is given is unique and more interesting. It is fairly rare that the story is told from third person and this just gives a more special twist to the story. Hearing the voice of the character telling it. This story relates a lot to racism, slavery and i can infer that the setting of this story takes place around the 1600s because that was the time of slaves and racism. This story makes me think about the events throughout history on racism and race separation.
    • 4/5
      Elijah of Buxton is the first child born into freedom in Buxton, Canada. Elijah is a very active young boy who has many talents, but doesn't have much courage. A slave steals from Elijah's friend who has been saving money to rescue his parents so Elijah goes on this journey to America to prove his courage and to find the slave who stole from his friend. On his adventure, Elijah discovers the horrible things his family had experienced before they were free. I really enjoyed really this book and would recommend it being in a classroom for teachers to share with their students. Children can learn a great deal from this book.
    • 4/5
      Elijah of Buxton would be a great book for children in grades 5 and up. This book is a newbery medal winner. The dialect in this book makes the reading more fun because it is set back in the 1800's after the civil war in Canada and the words and wording of the book really show the reader what it was like in that time period. Elijah is the only true free slave in Buxton, Canada, which is near the American Border. Buxton was full of runaway slaves. ELijah is a smart and intellectual boy and a lot of the people in the community come to him for help with writing and reading. Elijah is also excellent at chunking rocks and catching fish, but he is scared of snakes. Elijah is faced with many adventures including going into America to try and help Mr. Leroy buy his family back. Once he is in America Mr. Leroy is killed and Elijah is left all alone. He gets captured and locked up with other captured slaves. Elijah escapes and takes the baby that is with the captured slaves with him to try and give her a better life and save her life all together. When Elijah comes back into Canada he looked at Hope, the baby, and points at the land and says, "Looky there, look at that land! Look at those trees! Have you ever seen anything that precious? It's the land of the free!"(pg.340) That is my favorite part of the whole book because it really shows what kind of character Elijah is. Despite how scared he must have been all alone traveling, he still takes care of Hope and gets her to safety because he promised her parents he would. This book is great for young children especially those that are going through changes because Elijah of Buxton could teach children a few good things.
    • 4/5
      Zach GonzalesElijah of Buxton is about a boy named Elijah who was the first free-born in the town of buxton, and he is famous just for that. Elijah had many friends and many adventures, though many people think he's just a "fra-gile" boy. But a former slave steals the money from one of Elijah's friends who has been saving money to buy his family out of slavery in the south. Since that happened it is up to Elijah to find the thief and get back the money. It's a very dangerous journey, and he could be risking his own life. This book is a historical fiction. I think this book is fantastic and I recommend this to people who loves adventures. This book also has 12 A.R. points.
    • 4/5
      The colloquial language of this book may make it challenging for some students to read, but Mirron Willis does a beautiful job in the audio version of engaging the audience and making the common language charming. Elijah is an incredibly likeable character who is very optimistic, humourous and courageous. Through his tale, he brings Canadian history alive. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would easily recommend it to classes studying Slavery and the role of the Canadian underground railway.
    • 5/5
      In 1859, eleven-year-old Elijah, the first free-born child in Buxton, Canada, a haven for slaves fleeing the American South, uses his wits to try to bring to justice the lying preacher who has stolen money that was to be used to buy a family's freedom.Setting: Buxton is located on Lake Erie near Windsor, ON, and used as a drop off on the Underground Railroad.
    • 4/5
      Elijah, is eleven years old. He was the first child born as a free person in Buxton, Canada, a settlement founded for runaway slaves just over the border. Elijah is a very observant boy who has the amazing ability to throw stones with extreme distance and accuracy. He is most well-known for his first experience with the famous historic figure, Frederick Douglass. However, Elijah's happy-go-lucky life changes drastically when he heroically attempts to right a terrible wrong and discovers, first-hand, the terrible life his parents escaped from.
    • 5/5
      Elijah of Buxton is the wonderful adventures of the life of the first free-born black child born in Canada.
    • 5/5
      ... The characters in this book are so well developed you'll feel like you know them and have entered into their world. The book slows somewhat in the middle, but hang in there keep reading. The ending is absolutely incredible, get your tissues ready! brillant book!
    • 5/5
      Thoroughly engaging, this historical novel is carried along in the first half by humor, the narrator and his adept if sometimes inaccurate use of language (toady-frogs, "clearing flum outta his throat," "all sorts of who-struck-John busted loose," "my senses took off, squawking and flapping away like a flock of pheasants in a field"), and in the latter part by the suspenseful plot and powerfully understated depiction of slavery. Young free-born Elijah is utterly believable even if his two-fisted fish-chunking is not. As an introduction to this sorry time in U.S. history, "Elijah of Buxton" is a must for grade-schoolers, perhaps read to them by a parent. For older readers, including adults, who've never heard of the Canadian settlement of Buxton, this novel certainly will pique their interest. I hope it helps to bring the original Buxton liberty bell back into the open. One tiny nit to pick: Elijah's nasal fluids get far too much attention and the chord of his sensitive "fra-gile" nature was struck too often.But Elijah's powers of observation are keen, and his descriptions memorable. Of fresh-baked cherry pie, he remarks: "When you're smelling something real good, you only get two or three first-place smells of it afore your nose won't take no more notice. I didn't want to move or nothing so I could enjoy the smell before my nose started recalling I was toting six dead fish."A delight to read, it will make some hard lessons easy for younger readers to digest.
    • 5/5
      Absolutely wonderful! The story is a masterpiece of storytelling. Curtis takes the time to develop all characters -taking the reading from laughing out loud to near tears. Like real life, the story does not wrap everything up neatly but does leave the reader full of hope. The audio version really brings to book to life- the narration could not be better!
    • 5/5
      It started out slow and got better and better. Loved it.
    • 5/5
      This story is a bout a boy going up in a free town. When the preacher steals money that was meant to free a mans family, elijah goes with the man to find the precher in hope of finding the money. After the man suffers a heart attack the boy finds the preacher dead and saves a baby while having to leave the babies family with a gun knowing they would use it. This is a very heavy story. I was almost in tears at the end.
    • 4/5
      A novel about events and famlies in a Canadian border town called Buxton that is reminiscent of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books about frontier life. Through a series of seemingly unrelated events, the reader is exposed to the adventures, trials, and tribulations of Elijah Freeman.
    • 5/5
      There isn't a false note in this novel that combines humor with understated pathos. The author sustains the narrator's voice throughout - the voice of Elijah Freeman, soon to be 12 years old, whose "burden" of an overly sensitive temperament ends up being his (and others') salvation. Elijah is the first free child to be born in Buxton (a community of former slaves situated on the shores of Lake Erie in Ontario). Through his daily rounds in the village, his eavesdropping on adults' conversations, and his witnessing the small joys and heartaches of those who experienced slavery first-hand, Elijah comes to a deep understanding of the cruelty of the human soul and of the preciousness of freedom. The first three-quarters of the novel are a pretext to the heart-wrenching conclusion, when Elijah's so-called "fra-gile-ness" becomes his greatest resource. First-rate historical fiction for intermediate and middle school students.
    • 3/5
      Elijah is the first child born free in the black settlement of Buxton, Canada. He's known for being "fragile" and for peeing on Frederick Douglass as an infant. But when a friend is swindled out of the funds to buy his family out of slavery, Elijah shows incredible courage to try and put things right.I really enjoyed the second half of this novel. I felt it took too long to get started. The beginning is full of humorous vingettes that middle schoolers would probably enjoy, but the action doesn't get going until the latter half of the book. However, this is a good way for young people to learn about the African-American experience as free and slave. It may be a little long for the younger targeted office, but the humor may keep them reading.
    • 4/5
      Curtis teaches the reader about one of the many 'North Stars' that escaped slaves traveled to on the Underground Railroad. This one was across from Detroit in Buxton, Ontario, Canada. Elijah is born free and though he is often told he is too fragile, he demonstrates grit when he travels to America to help a friend retrieve stolen money that was meant for freeing/buying his family. I really grew fond of the voice and perceptions of Elijah.
    • 5/5
      This book was excellent. It was a little slow to get into but once you were into the story I couldn't put it down.
    • 5/5
      Elijah of Buxton is a fresh and brilliantly written book set in the pre-Civil War era. Christopher Paul Curtis, a master storyteller, brings ante-bellum history to life through Elijah, the ingratiating eleven year old, main character and narrator. Buxton in southern Ontario, Canada, a three mile by six mile plot of land was founded by a white Prebyterian minister in 1849 as a refuge for runaway slaves. Based on fact, 8th grade History teachers could enrich their curriculum by introducing students to Buxton and the light and hope it inspired in the lives of slaves.
    • 5/5
      An excellent read. Although I had a hard time getting into it at first, Curtis once again takes a serious subject and brings in humor and a child's view to make this a very compelling read.
    • 5/5
      This book tells a tale of pioneer life in Ontario during the year 1859. But these are not your ordinary pioneers. Buxton is a Black Settlement, inhabited mostly by escaped slaves from the Southern United States. This is a warm, touching and humorous look at the day-to-day life of these people as they adjust and learn to lead a life of freedom. The escapades of the main character, Elijah, reminded me of the "Great Brain" books and I laughed out loud many times. But alongside this new life of freedom we also witness the horrors of slavery and the mind boggles at the reality of it. I cried with tears of joy when newly escaped slaves arrived to the settlement. I was stupefied at the inhumanity as free-born Elijah travels to Michigan and witnesses slaves in chains. I felt proud of my country when I learned that Canada was once called the 'land of milk and honey' and 'the land of the free'. This is an emotional book. I highly recommend this book to both Canadians and Americans as a part of our combined history.
    • 5/5
      Elijah Freeman is the first child born free in the Canadian settlement of Buxton, populated mostly by freed and escaped slaves from America. He is kind and responsible, but (as his mother frequently tells him), fra-gile. By which she means emotional and prone to cry easily. The book is largely episodic, giving little stories here and there about Elijah's life. These stories however are all contributing to the character development of Elijah, Preacher, and Mr. Leroy, who will be the central characters in the ultimate plot, which doesn't really begin until the final quarter of the book. To say much of anything about that final plot would require spoilers. Suffice to say, Elijah is ultimately asked to grow up fast, and show enormous responsibility, and fight his tendency to "fra-gileness".
    • 4/5
      I had mixed feelings about this book while reading it. I liked this book because it had an interesting storyline of a place and topic that was new to me. I had never thought about the slaves that had escaped to Canada for freedom. Even though the story of Elijah turned out to be interesting, it had a rocky beginning. The book had a slow pace and wasn’t engaging for the first 13 chapters. However, the characters were well-developed and can easily draw the emotion of the audience. It was a wonderful community of people who welcomed newcomers with a celebration, but it was streaked with the menacing character of a crooked preacher. Elijah, with his fear of snakes, was perceived as “fragile” by his mother. But throughout the story, he proved to be courageous as he took steps to attempt right a huge mistake. I wouldn’t suggest this book for young readers. Even though this was an award winning book, I would probably only give it 4 stars.
    • 5/5
      This is a very powerful book. I liked Elijah's 'fragile,' kind, uncertainty, even as he tried to act grown up. He thought that he wasn't a strong person, as evidenced by the way he would parrot his parents, calling himself fragile, but even before the end of the book I thought he was stronger person then anyone thought. By the end he had grown up and grown even stronger. I found some of the unanswered questions heartbreaking. Did Mr. Leroy's family ever get out? Did Elijah get in trouble from his parents? Did he ring the liberty bell for Hope? Did Hope ever get to meet her biological parents again? Or did they die in captivity? I doubt if there will be a sequel, and the book doesn't really need one, but that doesn't stop me from wishing for one. This is one of the best historical fiction books of this time period that I have ever read. Sadly, I'd never heard of Buxton before, it seems to have been skipped over in American history books.