Susie Wilde (Children's Literature)
Leon's Story is the autobiography of a man born in Fuquay, North Carolina in 1936. This short novella is the result of stories captured on tape by Susan Roth, and whose collages decorate its pages. The vignettes from Leon's life span many years of change and are told with simplicity, honesty, and no anger. Leon's father was an uneducated but honest and hard-working sharecropper. On his fifteenth birthday, Leon watched while a car of white boys intentionally killed him. He tells the story of a white man teaching his son to hate, and he tells of the horrors he faced marching Raleigh's streets in non-violent protests during the sixties. Leon speaks without judgment, but readers will most certainly grieve and be enraged and troubled by his descriptions. 1997, Farrar, $14.00. Ages 8 to 12.

Marilyn Courtot (Children's Literature)
Leon Tillage grew up in rural North Carolina. His father was an uneducated sharecropper who could never seem to get out of debt. Leon reminisces about a time when entertainment consisted of listening to family stories, about how poor his family was and how wonderful Christmas was because they would get a small toy and some fruit in their Christmas shoeboxes. He and his brother James did go to school where they learned to read and write. They even taught their mother to read. He talks about discrimination and the real fear that the Klansmen engendered. As he grew older, he became active in the early Civil Rights movement. Then he ended up in Baltimore where he worked for thirty years as the custodian at the Park School. His story, which he tells at an annual assembly, is a tribute to perseverance and to someone who would not just sit by, but became involved in helping himself by acquiring an education. 1997, Farrar Straus Giroux, $14.00. Ages 8 up.

Kirkus (Kirkus Reviews, 1997)
Tillage, a black custodian in a Baltimore private school, reminisces about his childhood as a sharecropper's son in the South, and his youth as a civil-rights protester. He explains the mechanics of sharecropping and segregation, tells of his mistreatment and his father's murder at the hands of white teenagers out to "have some fun," and relates his experiences with police dogs, fire hoses, and jail while following Martin Luther King's ideas of nonviolent protest. Tillage matter-of-factly recounts horrific events, using spare language that is laced with remarkable wisdom, compassion, and optimism. Such gentleness only gives his story more power, as he drives home the harder realities of his childhood. Although the collage illustrations are interesting, they are too moody and remote for the human spirit behind the words, and readers will regret Roth's decision--especially in light of the boy smiling so brightly on the cover--that "even one photo would be too many for Leon Walter Tillage's words." 1997, Farrar Straus & Giroux, $14.00. © 1997 Kirkus Reviews/VNU eMedia, Inc. All rights reserved.

Susan Hepler (Parent's Guide, Fall 1998 (Vol. 1, No. 1))
Leon Tillage's recollections of growing up as a sharecropper's son in North Carolina is immediate, moving, and a vibrant witness to the troubled times preceding the Civil Rights Movement. Susan Roth's quiet collages symbolically mark sections and provide quiet pauses throughout this compelling and ultimately hopeful and remarkably unbitter book. 1997, Farrar Straux Giroux, $14.00. Ages 9 to 12.

Janice M. Del Negro (The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, December 1997 (Vol. 51, No. 4))
This is the personal memoir of Leon Tillage, a black sharecropper's son who grew up in North Carolina in the 1940s. Tillage is an eyewitness to an era of change. He saw the United States changing from Jim Crow to Civil Rights, saw his father deliberately run down and killed by a group of white boys, had dogs set on him by his employer, and took a hand in changing an oppressive society by joining the civil rights movement. The story of Tillage's life, edited from recorded interviews conducted by Susan Roth, is simply and straightforwardly told. This is personal history that does not shirk unpleasantries about lynching, the Ku Klux Klan, or the ever-present danger of being black and without rights in the American South. There is not a great deal of background information about the national civil rights movement, but the fact that this is an individual's memoir makes some of those big issues easier to grasp because they are presented in such a compellingly personal way. While the writing is not seamless, it has a documentary-style clarity that adds to its effectiveness. Black-and-white collage art adds an elegant design element to this stark but enlightening book. R--Recommended. (c) Copyright 1997, The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 1997, Farrar, 107p, $14.00. Grades 5-9.

Kem Knapp Sawyer (The Five Owls, January/February 1998 (Vol. 12, No. 3))
Author Leon Walter Tillage has worked as a custodian at The Park School in Baltimore, Maryland for the last thirty years. A twelve-year-old girl heard him tell the story of his life at a school assembly. She went home and told her mother what he had said. That mother, illustrator Susan Roth, felt his story needed to be told to more than the seventh grade at The Park School. Roth met with Tillage and asked him to tape his story. His talk was transcribed and eventually became this book--a moving account of growing up black on a North Carolina farm. Leon was born in 1936, the son of a sharecropper. The family lived on a farm owned by Mr. Johnson. No matter how hard they worked, they always ended up owing him money "because once you got on a farm you could work a lifetime and never get out of debt." Leon talks about his parents, who were strict and religious. They didn't allow fighting but insisted on respect. Everyone had chores to do, such as chopping wood or carrying water. The children didn't mind that, but they wanted to know why they didn't have the nice things that Mr. Johnson's children had. Their parents would tell them, "Well, that's the way it's intended." Times were hard. The white kids beat up the black kids and threw rocks at them on the way to school. Blacks could buy clothes at stores frequented by whites, but they could not try them on first. When blacks went to the movies, they had to sit in the balcony or on Coca-Cola crates. At the Tastee-Freez, they had to go to the back of the building to be waited on. When chased by Klansmen, they didn't call the police because some of them were Klansmen, too. But in the fifties things started to change. People started marching, and Martin Luther King came to Raleigh. Leon Tillage tells his story with frankness and warmth. As readers, it's easy to feel we are in the same room with him--and we are as amazed and disturbed as the twelve-year-olds in The Park School auditorium. Susan Roth chose to illustrate the story with patterns made from "soft black mulberry paper on top of heavy white stock," a stunning accompaniment to the text. The contrasting use of black and white and the simple designs make a strong statement and speak to the depth of the author's experience. 1997, Farrar Straus Giroux, 5 x 7, 107 pages, $14.00. Ages 8 up.

Horn Book (The Horn Book Guide, 1997)
Born in 1936, the second of nine children, Leon Tillage grew up in a black sharecropping family on a farm outside Raleigh, North Carolina. The incidents described in his moving personal narrative are transcribed from taped oral testimony; centering as they do on the intersections between his life and the surrounding white community, they bring fresh outrage to an all-too-familiar story. Category: Nonfiction. 1997, Farrar, 107pp.. Ages 9 to 12. Rating: 1: Outstanding, noteworthy in style, content, and/or illustration.