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Surrounded : America's first school for Black girls, 1832
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2025
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Publishers Weekly Review
Lupano (The Old Geezers) offers a harrowing glimpse into the trials and tribulations a school of trailblazing Black students faced in antebellum America. Prudence Crandall runs a boarding school for girls in Canterbury, Conn. When a young Black girl named Sarah comes to her seeking an education, Prudence admits her to the school despite disapproval from both Black and white townspeople. After the backlash, the headmistress doubles down, opening her school exclusively to "young ladies of color." As more students arrive, tensions rise. Laws are passed to shut the school down, townspeople terrorize the students with acts of vandalism and violence, and the girls are denied entry into the local church ("Nat Turner showed us what happens when negroes think they understand scripture," one white woman says as she blocks their way). Prudence fights for what she believes is right, taking her case to the Supreme Court, though the consequences of her win are tragic. Lupano's fairy tale--esque rendering of this true story makes each member of the ensemble cast distinct, though side stories about a feral boy and a witchy recluse muddy the script. Earth-toned coloring gives Fert's whimsical cartoon drawings a more somber feel. Readers will be inspired by this ultimately hopeful take on a shameful history. (Feb.)
Booklist Review
In 1832, 33 years before the U.S. abolition of slavery, Prudence Crandall opened her Canterbury Female Boarding School in Connecticut to a local Black girl fascinated with the concept of refraction. Protestations from the community closed the school to its white students. Meanwhile, an advertisement in Boston's abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator, led to the enrollment of 20 "young ladies and little misses of color" from various East Coast locations. Canterbury citizens were hardly welcoming: threats quickly turned vicious, Crandall landed in jail, and laws were amended to attempt to shut down the school. Crandall's case would reverberate through two of the U.S.'s most important civil rights decisions, Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) and Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Perhaps ironically, a French duo Lupano and Fert (with translation from Kane) stupendously capture American history in gorgeously cinematic, often wordless panels of muted browns, blues, and pinks, supplementing verifiable, recorded facts with could-have-been contemporaneous events: the interwoven fate of "Feral," a boy living wild in the woods who (aspirationally) shouts the details of Nat Turner's 1831 bloody rebellion; an elderly tree-climbing white-haired "witch" determined "to live differently"; the Goddess who bestows women and girls with "incredible power." The enlightening afterword, written by Joanie DiMartino, curator of the Prudence Crandall Museum, continues the girls' histories and notable achievements well after 1832.
Summary
A landmark story of courage and defiance in the face of injustice.

In 1832, Prudence Crandall opens a school for young girls in Canterbury, Connecticut. The town welcomes it, thinking educating girls is harmless. But when Crandall announces she will welcome Black girls, the community erupts in hostility.

Thirty years before the abolition of slavery, fifteen young Black women face insane prejudice. Surrounded tells the story of Crandall's school and its legal legacy for civil rights. Crandall v. State (of Connecticut) became the first full-throated civil rights case in U.S. history, influencing Supreme Court decisions like Dred Scott v. Sandford and Brown v. Board of Education. Discover how Prudence Crandall became a civil rights pioneer.

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