All Different Now written by Angela Johnson and illustrated by E.B. Lewis

June 19th, 1865, is the date slaves in Texas learned of their emancipation. In this picture book families are in the blistering fields picking cotton when “word spread/from the port,/to town,/through the countryside,/and into the fields/that a Union general had read from a balcony that we were all/now and forever free/and things/would be/all different now.” Change has been coming slowly all along but in this soft, stirring story, change comes swiftly—and the winds of change blow through the story. So lyrical is the exquisite text and so skillfully painted are the watercolor pictures that the reader can feel it ripple through their hair. Grades 2 and up.