The light brown skin of the Choctaws, the darker brown of the African Americans, and the paleness of the Caucasians cause an immediate connection as to what is being portrayed in the illustrations. The shades of various skin tones make it easy to spot the various races in the illustrations. I would like to discuss cultural authenticity on the part of all races presented in the story, Caucasian, Choctaw, and African American. In Tingle’s notes at the end of the book, he chronicles how the idea for the story came about and includes a write-up about today’s Choctaws in Mississippi and Oklahoma. We value Tingle’s inclusion of a picture of Louisiana Choctaws in his notes at the end of the story.

We now know that there may be truth in the stories that have been passed down in our family. I shared this story with my mother, and we both view it as a gift. I never knew that there were such stories told by the Choctaws. My mother and her sisters have always told a story about how we have an ancestor who escaped from slavery aided by the Choctaws. We are from Louisiana and have Choctaw heritage mixed with our African American one, so we think. The story occurs among the Choctaws and African American slaves living on opposite sides of the Bok Chitto River in Mississippi.

This story is a treat! Never before have I seen two cultures intermixed in a single historical setting with such authenticity. Brave Martha Tom and her people devise their own plan to help Little Mo and his family across Bok Chitto. When Little Mo finds out that his mother is being sold to another plantation, he convinces his family to escape across the Bok Chitto because any slave who crosses that river becomes free by law. There, she meets a slave boy, Little Mo, and forms a friendship with him.

Martha Tom, a Choctaw girl, disobeys her mother, in a search for blackberries, by crossing the Bok Chitto River over to the side where there are plantations.

Crossing Bok Chitto by Tim Tingle