This isn't the best book about the South during the US Civil War that I've read, but it has some very poignant scenes and does a good job of showing how the lives of white people and the Black people they believed they owned were woven together. The edition I read was converted to ebook format poorly and had weird mistakes like double Ls turned to Ds, which was distracting.

Another title from Build Your Library curriculum level 6 booklist. ( )

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Silent Thunder is about a brother and sister who work as slaves in the southern United States during the start of the Civil War. It’s told from each of their viewpoints, so it was nice to have two narrators for each viewpoint and helped me quickly transition to each one’s story when listening to the book. Both of these characters dream of bigger things for themselves.

A lot of the complexities of slavery and the issues surrounding the Civil War are a bit simplified to accommodate the younger audience of this book, but it still hits on important issues, like how slaves were treated, how slave owners fathered children with their slaves, and the sometimes brutality of slave owners. It also showed how situations completely depended on the temperament of the person in charge; a slave could have okay living conditions or live in hell based on who was in charge. For the most part, the characters Summer and Rosco lead lives that are the best they could be under slavery; their master isn’t overly harsh or demanding. However, Summer dreams of being able to have an education, especially to read. Rosco, on the other hand, dreams of going up north to fight in the Union armies to help free all the slaves.

Overall, I liked this book and think it’d be a great addition to a classroom library to help students learn more about slavery in the southern United States and give them a glimpse into issues about the Civil War. The narrators did a great job for this audiobook; the great narrators are ones you hardly notice any details about, because they just immerse you into the story and that’s exactly what I experienced while listening to this book.

Also posted on Purple People Readers. ( )

The determination and dreams are what the characters portray in this book. Rosco is determine to escape and fight in the warm that will free blacks. His sister summer wants to learn her alphabet and learn to read. They know that it is illegal but still work to attain their dreams.
Curriculum Connection:This book could easily be included with study of the Civil War. The characters are well developed, and historical information is skillfully interwoven into the fiction. After the notion of "silent thunder" is introduced (about a third of the way into the book), learners may want to select a character (or two) and keep track of
evidence of the character pursuing his/her desires. Issues related to family may also provide a focus for
discussion or writing, as may differences in perspective between the adults and the children or between the
families of Kit (slave mother) and Clair (plantation owner's wife.)