Last week I took an introductory class in blacksmithing at a forge in a town about 50 miles away from my own town. (Lawless Forge, for those who are interested.) I spent a few hours heating half a horseshoe to 2000 degrees and then pounding and shaping it into a knife.
I enjoyed it, and it also got me wondering if there were any picture books focusing on blacksmithing. I checked, and my library had two. Elizabeth Van Steenwyk’s 2018 picture book Blacksmith’s Song is one of those, so…I read it.
Blacksmith’s Song is interesting and well-meaning. The son of an enslaved blacksmith narrates the story, which is set somewhere in the American South during slavery, but after the Underground Railroad has been established.
The narrator’s father is a skilled craftsman, and his owner values his work. In addition to his forced labor, the blacksmith pounds out coded messages for escaped slaves traveling the Underground Railroad. His son (the narrator) is trying to learn both his father’s trade and the secret song to lead people to freedom.
However, the blacksmith’s health is fading and the slave master is growing suspicious about late night pounding in the forge. Eventually, the family escapes, making their own way on the Underground Railroad. Since they escape at night, and so much of the story’s events happen either literally at night or in the shadows and secret, Anna Rich’s illustrations are often dark and somber.
I call this book interesting first because while enslaved people passed many coded messages, there are no real records of the blacksmith’s hammering being used this way (as the ending author’s note indicates). But I mostly call this interesting rather than powerful because so many dramatic opportunities are missed. The son worries about his father’s health…but the father lives and they escape. The son wants to take over the task of working the anvil someday…and then he does, and pounds out one last song to freedom. There are so many trials that they could have gone through, and so much of the real story of the Underground Railroad that could have included that I was left vaguely dissatisfied by the book.
