Yet, even after four months of fear, calculated torture, and hazardous sailing with a degraded crew, Jessie was to face a final horror that would stay with him for the rest of his life. They did not heed the horrors that every day grew more vivid, more inescapable to Jessie. But to the men of the ship a "slave dancer" was necessary to ensure their share of the profit. Jessie was sickened by the thought of taking part in the business of trading rum and tobacco for blacks and then selling the ones who survived the frightful sea voyage from Africa. He was to play music so the slaves could "dance" to keep their muscles strong, their bodies profitable. Thirteen-year-old Jessie Bollier earns a few pennies playing his fife on the docks of New Orleans. One afternoon a sailor asked him to pipe a tune, and that evening Jessie was kidnapped and dumped aboard The Moonlight, a slave ship, where a hateful duty awaited him. In this iconic, wrenching Newbery Medal winning book, a young Louisiana boy faces the horrors of slavery when he is kidnapped and forced to work on a slave ship. Fox brings this time to life through Jessies eyes. Jessie Bollier often played his fife to earn a few pennies down by the New Orleans docks. The Slave Trade Paula Fox is a contemporary writer, but The Slave Dancer is set in 1840, in New Orleans, and on the slave ship The Moonlight. Kidnapped by the crew of an Africa-bound ship, a thirteen-year-old boy discovers to his horror that he is on a slaver and his job is to play music for the exercise periods of the human cargo.
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