Pink and Say is painful. It is written "To the memory of Pinkus Aylee." Patricia Polacco begins with a note: "Sheldon had been injured in a fierce battle and was left for dead in a muddy, blood-soaked pasture somewhere in Georgia. He was a mere lad of fifteen. . . . He was rescued from this field by another lad who had also been separated from his company." And then, Polacco begins the harrowing tale of two young soldiers in the civil war. It is a gut-wrenching story told with compassion. Sheldon Russell Curtis survives a confederate prison. A White boy, he returns home, recovers, and lives a long life. Pinkus Aylee, a Black boy, saw no future--he was hanged.
