I was blessed with a special father, a man who had unyielding faith in himself and his abilities, and who, knowing himself to be inferior to no one, tempered my learning with his wisdom. In the foreword to Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry I described my father as a master storyteller; he was much more than that. A highly principled, complex man who did not have an excellent education or a white-collar job, he had instead strong moral fiber and a great wealth of what he always said was simply plain common sense....

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is an extremely moving story of life down on the Mississippi during the times of the depression—not so long ago. The memory is still fresh; if it were not Mildred Taylor could not have made it into such an outstandingly gripping narrative…. There is the hideous shadow of violence everywhere, steadily rising to a fearful climax, with the mean whites shoring up their power. Yet, behind it all, there is the possibility of justice slowly coming. The people in the book ...

Burningly honest as [Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry] undoubtedly is, it has the air of autobiography in its crowded details and assumptive descriptions, while the raw emotionalism needs to be disciplined and channelled if it is to make a proper impact as fiction. There is much talent in this extended chronicle of a negro family in Mississippi in the early 'thirties, and a very evident truth in episodes derived from the author's father which show up the bigotries and brutal social alignments of t...

[Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry] describes a year during which Cassie Logan learns to handle the indignities inflicted upon herself, her family and neighbors. She also learns the importance of her family's struggle to keep their land and their economic independence…. Throughout the book, the reader is moved to tears by Ms. Taylor's vibrant, exquisite and simple style. The dialogue is lightly seasoned with Southern colloquialisms.

It will be a pity if the literary title, the jacket illustration and Newbery Medal caption brand [Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry] as another well written but self-conscious tale of civil rights. It does for its period and place what Laura Ingalls Wilder did for the pioneers, and had the author used Mrs Wilder's third person narrative, the impact might have been greater. As in the 'Little House' books, there are many incidents of fun, family conversations and drama which would repay re-rea...

[Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry] presents injustice and several ways of dealing with it…. There is little relief from the tension of frightening events, and the reader is able to identify with Cassie's frustration and anger as she experiences great unfairness and witnesses crimes against Black people. The events and settings of the powerful novel are presented with such verisimilitude and the characters are so carefully drawn that one might assume the book to be autobiographical, if the author w...

[Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is] a good straightforward novel about racial prejudice, fierce without being bitter, wholly absorbing…. The author brings a controlled power from her own family background to electrify her calm prose toward a wonderfully shaped climax. Susan Cooper, "Newbery Medalist Susan Cooper Reviews New Novels," in The Christian Science Monitor (reprinted by permission from The Christian Science Monitor; © 1976 The Christian Science Publishing Soci...