Traditional Folk: The Legend of John Henry by Terry Small

This book was a traditional folk tale of John Henry. He was a West Virginia born slave that only liked to hear the sound of a hammer hitting the steel. He was a hard working man that shaped tunnels through the West Virgina hills and mountains using a twelve pound hammer. Then one day a man with a sleeveless shirt came into town wanting to sell a drilling machine that could do the work of ten men. John Henry had moved twice due to this machine, and was tired of moving around. He was married and decided that he was going to prove to these people that this machine was not as good as everyone thought. So he challenged the machine to see who could drill the most. When they finished, John had drilled fifteen while the machine only made nine. After everything was done, John collapsed on the ground, death wondering near. It had been a while since I have been reacquainted with this tall tale. It didn’t realize that John Henry died at the end of the story, which was quite sad to me. Here is this great, strong, hard working man, wanting to do what he loved best but was in competition to a machine. I would use a book like this when teaching about tall tales and have the students pick out different events in the story that let them know that this was a tall tale. Most teachers teach about exaggeration, and this would be a great book to pick out such characteristics. Another tangent a teacher could go on would be talk about current situations of the economy. They could relate real life situations and how real people are losing their jobs due to machines.