Freedom's Pen
Wendy Lawton
Hardcover
(Moody Publishers, book club edition, Aug. 16, 2009)
Publication Date: January 1, 2009 | Age Level: 8 - 12 | Grade Level: 4 and up The Daughters of the Faith series has been a great success for Moody so far with 120,000 copies sold. Courage to Run is the most successful, with sales of 39,000. Tinker's Daughter is the next highest, at more than 19,000. They are all continuing to grow. There are a few elements of this series that separate it from many other children's book biographies. First, these books are about little girls. They are not biographies of the entire life of these characters- these are stories about girls who made a difference while they were still young. This enables the young girl readers to relate to the characters more than they would if these characters had to wait until they were thirty or forty before doing anything significant. Second, these stories are faith journeys. Wendy gets inside the minds of these girls in order to portray their struggles to make God an active part of their lives. In 1761, Phillis Wheatley was a little girl of seven or eight years old when she was captured in Gambia and brought to America as a slave. But she didn't let her circumstances keep her down. She learned to read and write in English and Latin, and showed a natural gift for poetry. By the time she was twelve, her elegy at the death of the great pastor George Whitefield brought her worldwide acclaim. Phillis became known to heads of state, including George Washington himself, speaking out for American independence and the end of slavery. She became the first African American to publish a book, and her writings would eventually win her freedom. More importantly, her poetry still proclaims Christ almost 250 years later.