Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor is reissued under the new Puffin Modern Classics series, A Puffin Book – stories that last a lifetime. There are over 30 titles in the series, some listed below, all with contemporary covers and interesting child-friendly endnotes. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is the classic story of a girl growing up in the deep South. Set in Mississippi at the height of the American Depression, this is the story of a family’s struggle to maintain their integrity, pride and independence against the forces of a cruelly racist society. ‘We have no choice of what colour we’re born or who our parents are or whether we’re rich or poor. What we do have is some choice over what we make of our lives once we’re here.’The Mississippi of the 1930s was a hard place for a black child to grow up in, but still Cassie didn’t understand why farming his own land meant so much to her father. During that year, though, when the nigh