Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad by David A. Adler (review)

Tubman has plenty of name recognition among middle-schoolers, many of whom know her as the runaway slave who led enslaved family members and strangers out of Maryland and Virginia and up as far as Canada via the Underground Railroad. Although most children's biographies do a careful job of covering her early years in slavery, her personal flight, and her brave work as a "conductor," not as many books follow through to her tireless and less glamorous work as a cook, laundress, unofficial nurse, and occasional Union spy throughout the Civil War, and her years of financial and family struggle for long decades after the war's end. Adler's narrative brings balance to Tubman's life story, and although daring adventures in the 1850s and '60s are the focus, Adler also pauses to consider puzzles and discrepancies in the biographical record (e.g., the extent of her support for John Brown's raid, or the estimated number of slaves she led to freedom), and to suggest how little official thanks or support for her efforts she ever received from the federal government for her extensive wartime service. Primary-source sidebar material, particularly excerpts from African-American newspapers, is interspersed throughout the text, as well as period photographs and illustrations. Coordinated timelines for Tubman's life and national events, source notes, bibliography, and index are also included.