In the author's words, this picture book is 'a celebration of those who sought the light of knowledge during the darkness of slavery'. Set on a plantation in the American South, it tells how Rosa and her mother risk severe punishment by leaving their cabin in the middle of the night to attend a secret school - a pit dug into the ground and disguised by branches - where an older, literate slave teaches people to read and write. Rosa gives her account of these outings in words which conjure up their powerful conjunction of fear and the thirst for knowledge, and James E.Ransome's paintings with their atmospheric play of light and dark are a perfect match to her tense narrative.