Seuss, with his wacky language and understanding of this harsh world, brought us the incredible story of Horton Hears a Who where, "a person is a person, no matter how small". Through this story, Horton, a courageous, loving elephant does everything in his power to protect the people who reside on a flower. Many seek to crush to what appears to be insanity, they seek to crush his and his people's voices. Through images and text Dr. Seuss tells a story of those not in power and their struggle towards equality. Similarly, Trevor R. Getz and Liz Clarke portray one, single story of an enslaved girl, Abina, who seeks freedom and for her voice to be heard. Abina And The Important Men, like Horton Hears a Who, aim for several different audiences through their relatable, child-like characters and these character's adult problems. Abina and The Important Men is a book separated into two parts: first, a graphic novel and second a translated, more detailed, historical text. Through both of these approaches to telling the same story, details and voices are lost due to those in power, whether it be the rich slave owner, Eddoo, or simply the historian recounting the past. Getz and Clarke seek to provide readers with an insight to provoke empathy and a better understanding of many slaves' fight for freedom. In Abina and The Important Men, the voice of the slaves is portrayed as less powerful than the white slave master and seen as relatively insignificant; because of this, they are silenced by those in a more powerful position. Because education has and continues to be a privilege in our society, history is told and written by those in control, washing away our choice to objectively reflect on it. .
Any historian's job is to reconstruct the past as accurately as possible, but their own values and dispositions inevitably influence the underlying message their work provides. In the first part of Abina and The Important Men, Getz and Clarke recreated the past through a comic-book style format.
