Let the Circle Be Unbroken

Mildred D. Taylor's Let the Circle Be Unbroken is a story for 11 year olds about a Black family in Mississippi in 1934, told by the youngest daughter.

What happens

Cassie Logan is in the back of the wagon with her brothers when the book opens, coming home in the November dark with one more stop to make. The Logans have their own place and their own crop, when plenty of families round there rent a shack or pick cotton for wages. That difference sits under everything.

They call in on Mrs Lee Annie, who is in her sixties, refuses to let anybody past without a hug, and is the best company for miles. Her grandson Russell has come home for four days in an army uniform. Everybody is pleased and everybody is also a bit worried about the uniform.

Then the grown-ups start talking, and Cassie starts wishing she was somewhere else.

A boy they all know, T.J. Avery, is in jail in town. A white shopkeeper was killed and T.J. has been blamed for it. What the adults are actually discussing is whether he will be given a trial at all, and what they think will happen to him either way.

Alongside that runs something much smaller and just as real. Son-Boy has a marble, blue swirling through misty green, and Cassie wants to hold it so badly she can hardly stand it. Papa has decided marbles are gambling and banned them. Cassie plays anyway.

That's what this book does so well. The whipping she knows is coming feels enormous, and so does the trial, and both live in the same head at once.

Cassie is wonderful company. She argues with everybody, she hates being cut off mid sentence by her big brother, and she notices exactly who is pretending not to be frightened.

Two things to be ready for.

The first is the language. It is written the way the family actually speak, with spellings to match, and your reader will need a page or two to tune in. After that it stops being work and turns into voices.

The second is the subject. There is talk of a lynching that was very nearly carried out, of men bullwhipped in the next county, and of a boy everyone expects to hang. Nobody in the story pretends the courts are fair, and the adults say so in front of the children. It is history told honestly and it is heavy going in places.

It is also a second book. The Logans' story starts in an earlier one that isn't in the library, so your reader is joining them partway through, and the opening chapters will tell them more than they might want about what has already happened.

What to read next

For another girl whose family lose their footing in the 1930s, try Esperanza Rising. It starts with a father showing his daughter how to lie flat on the ground and listen for the heartbeat of the land.