has anyone read the Book Sarny: A Life Remembered?

Question

the book is written by Gary Paulsen & i need some Q's answered for a project!! x! ok..here they are..

1) what challenges did people face?
2) how did the wat affect peoples lives?
3) what was life like back then ?

Answer 1

Full Review
After I read Nightjohn and found out there was a story about the girl in it as she got older, I wanted to read it too. That book was Sarny: A Life Remembered. It is considered a companion book and was written just a year later. The book is considered historical fiction, and the author, Gary Paulsen, does include an afterword explaining that although Sarny didn't exist, someone like her did, and perhaps this story will let you see things from that perspective.

Sarny is a slave, or rather she is at the beginning of the story. Very quickly we discover that the Civil War is going on, and when the blue coats come and kill her owner, declaring her free, Sarny has to find her children who were sold only a week before.

Sarny learned how to read in her slave quarters, with the other slaves, hiding it from their master. So when she leaves the plantation she heads to the slave selling area in town and is able to go through the records and read where her children were sold to: New Orleans.

We follow her, and another ex-slave from Sarny's plantation, on their journey to New Orleans, where they meet up, along the way, with a lady, Miss Laura, who says she will pay them to travel with her (fortunately she is heading to New Orleans) and to help with things upon arrival like cooking and socializing. They agree and with Miss Laura's help, Sarny is able to get her children back. But there is a lot more to it than that, because at the beginning of the story is an intro from Sarny, who is 94 at the time, letting us know she is going to tell us about her life.

What happens to Sarny and her children, does she have/find her husband? Will she continue to work for Miss Laura? This story was really interesting and you'll be able to find out the answers in this tale with a great ending.

The book is very easy to read. I love Paulsen's writing. It draws you in, and gives great characterizations to all the people found among the pages. The front cover recommends this book to readers aged 12 and up and I think that's pretty appropriate. The book is 178 pages and there is talk of some of the death that comes with the war, as well as vague sexual things, like having long legs, and being a magnet to men. And there is some racial violence as well.

From the last book you can see that Sarny's English, with her grammar and the way she talks, has improved, but it's not perfected or atleast not how I hear people talk now. She 'remembers on' things and she talks in 'ing' a lot, like instead of "He needs help" she says "He is needing help." It may be more the speech of the times than anything, but it is a distinctive factor of the book.

I really enjoyed this book. I read it in one evening/well night really after my son went to sleep. Sarny is a good person and she has a good outlook on the character of people. The issues of being an ex-slave in a newly freed South are presented in a way that young adults can understand better that it really happened and what things may have happened and how some of the ex-slaves could have felt. This book is a great piece of historical fiction.