Inspired by his teacher, eleven-year-old Lonnie begins to write about his life in a series of poems in which he discusses his feelings about his friends, his foster mom, his little sister Lili, and the death of his parents.
Tells the story of how President James Madison's young slave Paul Jennings stayed behind when Washington, D.C., was threatened by the British during the War of 1812, and helped the president's wife Dolley save official papers and other valuable items from the White House before it was burned by the advancing British Army.
Tells the story of James Forten, a free African-American boy from Philadelphia who was taken prisoner aboard a British warship and later on a British prison ship until the end of the war.
