Henry "Box" Brown

So after some of our recent historical sightseeing I decided to read the history of Richmond on wikipedia. The most interesting part was the mention of a slave from Richmond named Henry that mailed himself to freedom ... MAILED himself to freedom. Who is this guy cause I love him! For the rest of his life in Philadelphia he was known as Henry "Box" Brown.

The very next day I was researching some of the new award-winning kids books for class and ran across this Caldecott winner "Henry's Freedom Box". It looks like I'm not the only person on earth who likes the story. I had to buy it for the future Pierotti kids as a Richmond keepsake but I let the kids at school borrow it.

(picture from amazon.com, obviously)