Children’s Literature Evaluation Form

Your Name: Daphne Rodriguez

Book Title: Liberty Street
Author: Candice Ransom
Genre: Historical Fiction
Illustrator: Eric Velasquez
Publisher/Year: Walker Publishing Company / 2003
Evaluate the Book for the following elements
Style and Language: Using examples for the book, explain the following: Word choices, dialogue, rhythm, rhyme and
sentence length. Share unexpected insights or interesting information the reader learns from this story. (5 points)
Word Choice: Simple
Sentence Length: Medium-Long
Dialogue: Kezia is telling her story as a slave and how she became free.
Rhythm: There is no rhythm
Rhyme: There is no rhyme
Character: With examples from the book, provide the following- (5 points)
Who is the main character?
How can the reader relate to the character?
Who are the supporting characters?
The main character is Kezia. The reader can relate to her because she is in school learning how to read and write.
The supporting characters are Kezia’s mother, Zeus, and her teacher Miss Eulalie
Plot: Summarize the major events of the story (6 points)
Kezia is a slave until her mother helps her and other slaves escape.
Setting: Explain the place and time of this book. (2 points)
Theme: What is the main message of this book? (2 points)
Setting: 19th Century Fredericksburg, Virginia
Theme: Slavery
Illustration: Analyze the book you selected with the following categories
Style (realism, surrealism, expressionism, impressionism, naïve, cartoon art)? (2 points)
Surrealism
Media Choice (paints, oils watercolors, pencils, pen, charcoal, crayons, acrylic, chalk): (2 points)
The illustrator used oil on Fabriano paper
Give examples or describe how the following visual elements are used in the illustrations: (3)
Line: Lines are used as borders
Shapes: There are different shapes to create a person, like Kezia or items like a bucket
Color: There are basic colors used like brown, black, red, green, blue
Texture: The texture of the book looks like a canvas painting
Page design (placement of the illustrations, use of borders, white and dark space and all pages the same or different).
(3)
Some of the illustrations are placed on in little boxes with red borders and there is some dark space. All pages are
different.
Child Development Theory: Choose either Piaget, Erickson or Social Emotional to describe the connection to the book
Chose 1 only (5 points)
Piaget:
Name the stage Preoperational and the age 2-7 years
Explain the cognitive development from this stage and provide an example from the book to support your choice:

Children begin to think symbolically and learn to use words and pictures to represent objects.

In the story, Kezia’s mother uses a white scarf to represent that is not safe to run to freedom and a red scarf to
represent that it is safe to run to freedom.

Erickson:
Name the stage_____________________ and the age_______________________
Explain the cognitive development from this stage and provide an example from the book to support your choice:

Emotional Development:
Identify the age: _________________________
Explain the social development for this age and how the book relates
to the emotional level you chose:

1 would not recommend 2 average 3 highly recommended

Your rating of the book: 3

Why?
I would recommend the book because it makes it easy for children to understand our past without the gory details.
While I do believe we shouldn’t sugarcoat our history, this book did a good job in telling a story from a slave’s point of
view.