Why we’re walking 12 miles tomorrow

So. Tomorrow a few of us from the Lee & Low office will be doing something kind of crazy: walking 12 miles around Manhattan.

Why?

Well, some of you might know that we’ve just released a book called Love Twelve Miles Long about Frederick Douglass and his mother, Harriet. When Frederick was very young, Harriet lived on a plantation 12 miles away, and every once and a while when she’d could, she’d walk the twelve miles by night to visit her son.

Love Twelve Miles Long imageWe were all amazed by this story, but when discussing the book we realized that the measurement “twelve miles” was hard for us to really imagine. What did it feel like to walk that distance?

Well, tomorrow we’re going to find out.

We’ll be starting down at Wall Street and walking up to Frederick Douglass Circle in Harlem, then back down the other side of Central Park and ending at the New York Public Library. We’ll be posting a map of the route and photos soon, and you can also follow along with us on twitter tomorrow as we walk with hashtag #12miles. We’re excited to literally put ourselves in someone else’s shoes- wish us luck!

6 thoughts on “Why we’re walking 12 miles tomorrow”

  1. Oh, how wonderful. I wish I could have joined the walk. When writing the book, I had in mind that the walk took Harriet 4 hours.
    I have walked the Los Angeles Marathon and that took me 8 hours!

    How did it go? How long did it take?
    I thank the people at Lee and Low for going that extra mile for my story! 🙂

  2. Wow, it was really tiring! What a challenge. We are working on a video that fully documents the day. We will let you know when it is ready (we are shooting for January). Stay tuned.

  3. Now that’s what I call, “putting yourself in the character’s shoes1” What a wonderful idea and great insight of the challenges that Frederick Douglass’ mom encountered.

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