Cline-Ransome: Hi, this is Lesa Cline-Ransome and I am the author of Before She Was Harriet.

James. Ransome: Hi, I'm James Ransome. I'm the illustrator of Before She Was Harriet.

Cline-Ransome: The story of Harriet Tubman has always been one that has infused me with pride. Here was a woman, a black woman, and enslaved black woman, who did all the things women were told they could not do. As a young girl, her fearlessness gave me courage, her resistance made me a fighter. We have come to know her only as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, but while researching her life for this book we also discovered her many other lives, as a suffragist, as a Union spy, a nurse, a General, Moses, Araminta. And all of those roles were in the service of others.

James. Ransome: And as the illustrator, my job was to take Lesa's text and highlight those important moments visually. My use of watercolors added on a bit at the beginning, actually a thread that goes throughout the book, where it starts with a train coming into a train depot who picks her up. As she boards this train, basically reflects on her life, going back to her childhood and all the different things that she did while she was alive. This train is a symbol of the ending of her life, as she's going to the other part, or the other side, and that reflection while she's riding the train.

Cline-Ransome: And now we'll read an excerpt to you from Before She Was Harriet.

"Here she sits, an old woman. Tired and worn, her legs stiff, her back achy. But before wrinkles formed and her eyes failed, before she reached her twilight years, she could walk for miles and see clearly under a sky lit only with stars. Before she was an old woman, she was a suffragist. A voice for women who had none, in marriages, in courts, in voting booths. Before her voice became soft and raspy, it was loud and angry, rising above injustice."