Nightjohn by Gary Paulsen

Nightjohn is a book about slavery set before the time of the civil war, that was written by Gary Paulsen. It was first published in 1993, and later, it was made into a movie that aired on the Disney Channel in 1996. It is set at a plantation in the Southern United States in the 1850s. The narrator and protagonist of the story is a young African-American slave named Sarny, who is taught to read and write by another slave, Nightjohn.