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As an educator, I’ve experienced the power of true stories to engage readers, widen their world, spur thinking, and support content areas. I’ve learned plenty from these books, too! As an author, I’m fascinated with many aspects of the American Revolutionthat I never learned about as a student. Researching this time period has revealed much more than men at war. The revolution affected every aspect of life—a “world turned upside-down.” Today, we’re fortunate to have a range of stories that help kids understand that history is about people much like them facing the challenges of their time and place.
We all know about the Declaration of Independence and recognize at least a few of the dozens of signatures of the men who signed it. But who knew about the single female name that appears on the document?
Here’s the story of Mary Katharine Goddard, a businesswoman and newspaper publisher, who dared to break the norms of society. When the call went out for a printer to publish the treasonous Declaration, she rose to the task and went so far as to put her name on it! This story offers a fascinating peek into the life of a revolutionary woman.
A rousing picture book biography of the only woman whose name is printed on the Declaration of Independence.
Born in 1738, Mary Katharine Goddard came of age in colonial Connecticut as the burgeoning nation prepared for the American Revolution. As a businesswoman and a newspaper publisher, Goddard paved the way for influential Revolutionary media. Her remarkable accomplishments as a woman defied societal norms and set the stage for a free and open press. When the Continental Congress decreed that the Declaration of Independence be widely distributed, one person rose to the occasion and printed the document-boldly inserting her name at…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
As an educator, I’ve experienced the power of true stories to engage readers, widen their world, spur thinking, and support content areas. I’ve learned plenty from these books, too! As an author, I’m fascinated with many aspects of the American Revolutionthat I never learned about as a student. Researching this time period has revealed much more than men at war. The revolution affected every aspect of life—a “world turned upside-down.” Today, we’re fortunate to have a range of stories that help kids understand that history is about people much like them facing the challenges of their time and place.
A gingerbread baker had a role in the American Revolution? I had to know more!
I love stories of people behind the scenes, everyday people like us, so often overlooked. These stories let us know that we’re all a part of history. In this book, a German immigrant uses his baking talents to support George Washington’s troops.
Recently, I’ve learned with my research for an upcoming book about how difficult it was to supply the Continental Army with food. Starving soldiers had to go out and forage for food—one of the many everyday struggles of the time that brings history home. I also love that it’s a story of generosity. Rockliff’s lively books never fail to engage me as a reader.
Christopher Ludwick was a German-born American patriot with a big heart and a talent for baking. When cries of “Revolution!” began, Christopher was determined to help General George Washington and his hungry troops. Not with muskets or cannons, but with gingerbread! Cheerfully told by Mara Rockliff and brought to life by Vincent Kirsch’s inventive cut-paper illustrations, Gingerbread for Liberty is the story of an unsung hero of the Revolutionary War who changed the course of history one loaf at a time.
As an educator, I’ve experienced the power of true stories to engage readers, widen their world, spur thinking, and support content areas. I’ve learned plenty from these books, too! As an author, I’m fascinated with many aspects of the American Revolutionthat I never learned about as a student. Researching this time period has revealed much more than men at war. The revolution affected every aspect of life—a “world turned upside-down.” Today, we’re fortunate to have a range of stories that help kids understand that history is about people much like them facing the challenges of their time and place.
I’m a fan of this book for several reasons. Like all of us, the founders of the United States were complicated people, and I love books that reveal the person inside.
As an author who writes about American history, I am constantly grateful for the immense resources of the Library of Congress, the institution that preserves our history. And thirdly, I’m a fan of author Barb Rosenstock—everything she writes is special!
This story shares Jefferson’s love of books and reading, his interest in absolutely every subject, and how his massive book collection helped build the Library of Congress.
Young readers of all ages will love this story about President Thomas Jefferson, who found his passion as soon as he learned to read: books, books, and more books!
Before, during, and after the American Revolution, Jefferson collected thousands of books on hundreds of subjects. In fact, his massive collection eventually helped rebuild the Library of Congress—now the largest library in the world.
Author Barb Rosenstock's rhythmic words and illustrator John O'Brien's whimsical illustrations capture Jefferson's zeal for the written word as well as little-known details about book collecting. An author's note, bibliography, and source notes for quotations are also…
Mother of Trees is the first book in an epic fantasy series about a dying goddess, a broken world, and a young elf born without magic in a society ruled by it.
When the ancient being that anchors the world’s power begins to fail, the consequences ripple outward—through prophecy, politics,…
As an educator, I’ve experienced the power of true stories to engage readers, widen their world, spur thinking, and support content areas. I’ve learned plenty from these books, too! As an author, I’m fascinated with many aspects of the American Revolutionthat I never learned about as a student. Researching this time period has revealed much more than men at war. The revolution affected every aspect of life—a “world turned upside-down.” Today, we’re fortunate to have a range of stories that help kids understand that history is about people much like them facing the challenges of their time and place.
I’ve always loved stories with intrigue. Here’s a book about a female spy during the American Revolution.
George Washington’s spies came from all walks of life—men, women, people of color. When Anna Smith Strong hung her laundry out to dry, she was multitasking! She appeared to be doing the wash, but she was using code to pass information about British military activity. As a member of the Culper spy ring, she took risks in the fight for independence.
The thrilling true story of the female spy who helped save the American Revolution
Anna Smith Strong (1790-1812) was a fearless woman who acted as a spy for George Washington during the Revolutionary War. Recruited by Washington's spymaster, Major Benjamin Tallmadge, she joined the Culper Ring, a group of American spies. General Washington placed a huge amount of trust in his spies, and Anna helped pass him important messages at a great risk to herself and her family. One of her cleverer devices was to hang laundry on the line in a planned fashion so that other spies could read…
I am a Canadian writer who has, at one time or another, been a magician, an avid Dungeon & Dragons player, and the creator of fictional worlds where magic is both surprisingly fun and yet hidden in the shadows of our own everyday world. I love it when a writer spins original magic into a familiar world, and I am even more impressed when magic and a new world drag my attention and won’t let me go. These five diverse novels touch on everything I love about magic and storytelling without rehashing the old tropes of wizards, dragons, and fair maidens in distress.
In a pre-revolutionary Boston where magic is outlawed and gets a conjurer sent to prison–or worse–Ethan Kaille makes a living as a thief-taker recovering stolen goods while hiding his skills as a powerful conjurer.
I love the raw honesty of the broken hero and the unique yet familiar setting where a nation is being born while magic spins in the shadows, manipulating, terrifying, and killing. I couldn’t put this book down, and then I powered through the subsequent sequels, always wanting more!
In Thieftaker, D. B. Jackson delivers a thrilling debut tale of magic and intrigue that will leave readers breathless and eager for more Ethan Kaille.
Boston, 1765: In D.B. Jackson's Thieftaker, revolution is brewing as the British Crown imposes increasingly onerous taxes on the colonies, and intrigue swirls around firebrands like Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty. But for Ethan Kaille, a thieftaker who makes his living by conjuring spells that help him solve crimes, politics is for others…until he is asked to recover a necklace worn by the murdered daughter of a prominent family.
Growing up in New England, I discovered a passion for the historical landmarks around me. My grandmother’s home in Andover, MA, had a plaque on the front door, declaring Lafayette made a speech from its front steps. In my grandmother’s journal, I discovered the story of the Lovells: Master John Lovell, Loyalist, of the Boston Latin School, and his son James Lovell, teacher at the school and patriot. Imagining the conflicts that must have brewed between them, I knew I had to write The Remarkable Cause: A Novel of James Lovell and the Crucible of the Revolution.An English and history teacher, I wove historical background into study of literature.
Set in Boston at the beginning of the Revolutionary War,Johnny Tremain tells of a young silver-smith apprentice whose pride leads to disaster. His hand is crippled and he can no longer pursue his dream. His courage and desire to improve his life make him memorable; I still recall Johnny’s passion years after reading the novel. Eventually Johnny’s hand is healed by a surgeon and he joins the patriots.
Johnny Tremain presents a brave character living in challenging and divisive times.Johnny Tremain brings to life conflicts with British rule and the determination of those on both sides of the struggle.
This thrilling Newbery Medal-winning novel about the Revolutionary War is a classic of children's historical fiction.
Fourteen-year-old Johnny Tremain, an apprentice silversmith with a bright future ahead of him, injures his hand in a tragic accident, forcing him to look for other work. In his new job as a horse-boy, riding for the patriotic newspaper The Boston Observer and as a messenger for the Sons of Liberty, he encounters John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Dr. Joseph Warren.
Soon Johnny is involved in the pivotal events of the American Revolution, from the Boston Tea Party to the first shots fired at…
I’m a professional historian and life-long lover of early American history. My fascination with the American Revolution began during the bicentennial in 1976, when my family traveled across the country for celebrations in Williamsburg and Philadelphia. That history, though, seemed disconnected to the place I grew up—Arkansas—so when I went to graduate school in history, I researched in French and Spanish archives to learn about their eighteenth-century interactions with Arkansas’s Native nations, the Osages and Quapaws. Now I teach early American history and Native American history at UNC-Chapel Hill and have written several books on how Native American, European, and African people interacted across North America.
The Boston Massacre: A Family History takes an event that I thought I knew inside and out, an event I teach in my classes, and tells an entirely new story.
The soldiers who shot the protestors in Boston on a wintery day in 1770 are usually the villains—Paul Revere and other Boston revolutionaries labeled the deaths a “massacre,” after all. But by starting a few years earlier, Zabin shows the British soldiers as young men coming to a colonial town that was also, at the time, British.
They lived in colonial houses, made Bostonian friends, and married Bostonian women. So by the time tensions between the protestors and the British government were accelerating into war, it was a community of friends and families that would be torn apart.
“Historical accuracy and human understanding require coming down from the high ground and seeing people in all their complexity. Serena Zabin’s rich and highly enjoyable book does just that.”—Kathleen DuVal, Wall Street Journal
A dramatic, untold “people’s history” of the storied event that helped trigger the American Revolution.
The story of the Boston Massacre—when on a late winter evening in 1770, British soldiers shot five local men to death—is familiar to generations. But from the very beginning, many accounts have obscured a fascinating truth: the Massacre arose from conflicts that were as personal as they were political.
I found my first arrowhead at age seven and have been hooked on history ever since. My Bone Rattler series—Freedom’s Ghost is the seventh installment—builds on many years of research and field trips, supplemented by intense investigation of specific aspects leading up to and during the writing of each novel. The volatile 18th century was one of the most important periods in all of history, and I immerse myself in it when writing these books—by, among other things, reading newspapers of the day, which are often stacked on my desk.
I deeply enjoyed Archer’s book for its intimate depiction of Boston’s life under British occupation from 1768 until mid-1770.
It was a city under siege in many respects, with four thousand troops in a community of only sixteen thousand souls. The city’s streets –mostly paved with oyster shell—come to life with details on tavern fare, street life, troop encampment, epidemics, the violent celebrations of the annual Pope’s Day, popular song parodies, and the three hundred women who initiated a boycott of foreign tea.
Here too you can meet early patriot leaders like James Otis, who was rendered “insane” by a blow to the skull by a furious tax collector and wandered, raving, for years, until he was struck down by a lightning bolt. Archer’s book pulls you into the torment and the glory of life in a powder keg destined to explode.
In the dramatic few years when colonial Americans were galvanized to resist British rule, perhaps nothing did more to foment anti-British sentiment than the armed occupation of Boston. As If an Enemy's Country is Richard Archer's gripping narrative of those critical months between October 1, 1768 and the winter of 1770 when Boston was an occupied town. Bringing colonial Boston to life, Archer deftly moves between the governor's mansion and cobblestoned back-alleys as he traces the origins of the colonists' conflict with Britain. He reveals the maneuvering of colonial political leaders such as Governor Francis Bernard, Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson,…
I grew up all around history—my childhood home was across the street from where one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence used to live—and have long been fascinated by the connections between American and other countries’ histories, especially in the old ports and harbors where sailing ships connected America to the world. I’ve lived and taught for the past two decades in Hong Kong, one of the world’s great ports and a place to think about the American Revolution not as “our” history but as part of how to explain Americans to the world.
What do we know about the Revolution, and why do we think we know it? Sometimes, even canonical events we think we know are not nearly as well-documented as we might think, like the Boston Tea Party.
This book is about history and memory, the gap between what happened when colonists threw the East India Company’s tea into Boston Harbor, and how that event was remembered decades later. Drawing on the as-told-to-reminiscences of Tea Party participant George Robert Twelve Hewes, which were written down over half a century after the Tea Party took place, Young plumbs the gap between the “destruction of the tea,” as the event was known at the time, and the “Boston Tea Party,” a name which only emerged in the 19th century as Americans reimagining that revolt into the story of how America was made.
Young shows us that accounts like Hewes’s had as much to…
George Robert Twelves Hewes, a Boston shoemaker who participated in such key events of the American Revolution as the Boston Massacre and the Tea Party, might have been lost to history if not for his longevity and the historical mood of the 1830's. When the Tea Party became a leading symbol of the Revolutionary ear fifty years after the actual event, this 'common man' in his nineties was 'discovered' and celebrated in Boston as a national hero. Young pieces together this extraordinary tale, adding new insights about the role that individual and collective memory play in shaping our understanding of…
I found my first arrowhead at age seven and have been hooked on history ever since. My Bone Rattler series—Freedom’s Ghost is the seventh installment—builds on many years of research and field trips, supplemented by intense investigation of specific aspects leading up to and during the writing of each novel. The volatile 18th century was one of the most important periods in all of history, and I immerse myself in it when writing these books—by, among other things, reading newspapers of the day, which are often stacked on my desk.
This story of brawny, boisterous working rebels spins the tale of the Revolution from the perspective of the oft-oppressed maritime population of Boston and neighboring ports.
These two-fisted sailors, fishermen, dockworkers, fugitive slaves, rope-spinners, and shipwrights were the first to take to the streets in the rebel cause. Their names, with the exception of the fiery Crispus Attucks, did not make the history texts but their impact was felt all the way to London.
Bourne gives us a chronicle so real you can smell the salty air and the tar as these angry patriots set out with tar and feathers. Getting a feel for these defiant, saucy personalities, and through them becoming an eyewitness to the Stamp Tax riots, the Boston Massacre, and the Tea Party, gives you a sense that revolution was inevitable.
They did the dirty work of the American Revolution
Their spontaneous uprisings and violent actions steered America toward resistance to the Acts of Parliament and finally toward revolution. They tarred and feathered the backsides of British customs officials, gutted the mansion of Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson, armed themselves with marline spikes and cudgels to fight on the waterfront against soldiers of the British occupation, and hurled the contents of 350 chests of British East India Company tea into Boston Harbor under the very guns of the anchored British fleet.
Cradle of Violence introduces the maritime workers who ignited the American…
