In the nearly wordless “Hip Hop Wish,” a frog inadvertently rubs a magic lamp and finds itself saddled with an importunate genie eager to shower it with inappropriate goods and riches. Lachenmeyer freely borrows familiar folkloric elements, subjecting them to mildly comical twists. The theme of persistence (for better or worse) links four tales of magic, trickery, and near disasters. Like Virginia Hamilton's Drylongso (1999) and unlike John Henry, Big Jabe seems not just larger than life, but a force of nature, subtle, secret, untouchable-and that undercurrent of mystery gives his story a mythic power. In the end, Jabe leaves as suddenly as he came, and is last seen striding away, towering over the trees. Nelson ( Brothers of the Knight, not reviewed) takes Jabe from a rawboned child with an engaging grin to brawny adulthood, placing him into historical scenes that rival Trina Schart Hyman's for fine detail and strongly drawn, expressive figures. Addy whispers that Jabe is “taking them to the pear tree,” which is to say pointing them North to freedom. Only the overseer is displeased-even more so when each slave who feels his displeasure disappears with his family in the wake of a strange storm that wipes out any sign of a trail.
Like the pear tree he plants, which grows to full size in one season “with the North Star shining through its branches,” all of the crops on the plantation come in with unprecedented abundance that year. By that June, young Jabe is a full-grown man, capable of mending ten miles of fence between midday and sundown. The lad, who floats down the river and into the arms of Simon Plenty’s house slave, Addy, shows early signs of unusual ability, calling fish out of the water until Addy’s wagon is piled high.
Nolen ( In My Momma's Kitchen, 1999) rears up a new tall-tale hero, with the strength of 50 and a hidden agenda.
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