On the way to the island where they will be picking up the slaves, the crew encounters a ship that is trying to prevent them from picking up the slaves. Overnight they notice that the look-out on the other ship leaves his post and doesn't come back for over ten minutes so they send the first canoe acrost. Once the slaves board the larger ship the crewmates fill the canoe with old partially rusted guns. When they had completed their misson, over one hundred slaves were on the ship.

On the journey to America, they have to go off course to purchase supplies. When they set off again, a few of the slaves died Then the crew and slaves started to go blind. The only two people that were unaffected by the disease were Jessie and a slave boy named Ras.The blind captain and Jessie navagate the ship but neither notice the storm generating ahead. By the time Jessie notices, it is too late. The winds were picking up speed and the waves were getting larger. The ship finally capsized...


A very poor excuse for literature.   September 2, 1998
 1 out of 1 found this review helpful

I read this book because it was a possible selection for a 7th grade language arts class that I was working with. I know that there are better things that children could be reading. I thought that the story was very disjointed and contrived. It was as though someone said "Hmmm...we need a book that we can sell to schools to use in their literature or social studies programs. It should tell a little bit about the horrors of slavery, have some action, and hint at atrocities and perversity. It doesn't have to be especially well-written, and, oh, by the way, keep it around 120 pages." I would be embarrassed to read this to my kids because they might ask me why we were reading such junk. I'd hate to try to explain some of the plot and characterization irregularities. Some parts of this book were simply prurient. We need to teach kids history, but we need to do it in a responsible manner. I'm glad some of the kids above found it boring. Hopefully they weren't paying enough attention to have much of this drivel stick in their minds. Shame on the author and anyone who granted it any kind of award.


The best suspense/adventure book ever!!   May 22, 1998
The Slave Dancer is about a boy named Jessie who gets captured and put on an illegal slave ship to play his fife for the slaves to dance to. In this book I learned how badly the slaves were treated .They were whipped and beaten! I liked this book because it has a lot of suspense and adventure.This book is for people who like to read suspense and adventure novels. On a scale from "1-10" I would give The Slave Dancer a "9" because of the cursing and the captian's disgusting bloodthirstiness.This book would not be for children 5 and under to read because of the bloodiness and bad language in the story.