Big Jim and the White BoyAn American Classic Reimagined
Review posted March 20, 2025.
Ten Speed Graphic, 2024. 282 pages.
Review written February 18, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review
2025 Alex Award Winner
The Alex Awards are given each year to ten books published for adults that will be of interest to teens. I couldn't resist the title of this graphic novel - a reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
It's been a very long time since I read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, so I'm not sure how many incidents from this book came from that one (I don't think a whole lot), but it begins by illustrating a passage from that book - which is then interrupted by a 101-year-old Jim himself in 1932 Nicodemus, Kansas, telling stories to Black children alongside an old Huckleberry Finn. Jim says about the words Samuel Clemens put in his mouth, "Who talks that kind of gibberish?" And then he tells stories of what really happened.
Another part of the frame is a professor at Howard University in 2022 talking about the historical people and events behind Mark Twain's stories - and how he whitewashed it to make slavery in Missouri not seem so bad. She's believes that Jim was based on her own great-great-great-grandfather.
So with these two frames giving commentary - Old Jim and Old Huck bantering with each other and the professor giving historical notes - we hear about the adventures Jim and Huck had. Jim was looking for his wife and children, sold down the river by Huck's father - and he told his story everywhere he went, so that word would get to them that he was looking. Meanwhile, he rescued enslaved people and fought their enslavers.
Big Jim made a name for himself (and got his face on big, scary posters) helping with the Underground Railroad, in the border wars when there was a question if Kansas would be a slave state or a free state, and during the Civil War, fighting for the Union.
And through all the adventures, Jim and Huck save each other's lives, though, honestly, Huck is more of a sidekick in this tale. This book reveals more about their relationship, and I love that they end up together, with friendly bickering and storytelling.
As a graphic novel, this is a much quicker read than the original, and as a bonus you don't have to wade through all that dialect. An epic historical tale.