Watch and Wait

Woodville #3

by Oliver Optic

Reproduction of the Watch and Wait by Oliver Optic

198 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1864

About the author

Oliver Optic was the pen name of William Taylor Adams, a Massachusetts schoolteacher whose magazines and stories for children reached a very wide audience from the 1850s through the turn of the twentieth century.

Reviews

[Janelle]

Dnf. This is the story of three young slaves who escape from their master in America’s mid 1800’s. The author wrote the book both as an adventure story for young readers and to garner sympathy for the plight of slaves.
I only read four chapters of this book and for me it was akin to entering a different world. Even though the author aimed to promote understanding, in my modern eyes the book still seems very racist. One of the things that bothered me was the assertion that slaves of full African descent could bear the trials of slavery, such as a whipping, with ease and nonchalance. Whereas a slave with Anglo Saxon blood could not. His white ancestry meant that he felt things more deeply and would fight back.
I found this idea both strange and offensive, and not being an American hard to understand. So I did a little googling and came across this article. It references the time period in which this book was written and explained why the author chose to depict two of his young slaves as being so white. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/artic...
I’m undecided about whether or not to return to this book. The topic is a difficult one and the author writes in a rather pompous tone.