Middle Grade Monday: Rebellion, 1776 by Laurie Halse Anderson

                                                        

Image: Simon & Schuster

Rebellion 1776 by Laurie Halse Anderson. 416 p. Atheneum Books for Young Readers/ Caitlyn Dlhouy Books/ Simon & Schuster, April 1, 2025. 9781416968269. Review of a finished copy borrowed from the public library. 

Middle Grade Monday features Rebellion 1776 by Laurie Halse Anderson. Thirteen-year-old Elsbeth works for a crotchety, old, loyalist judge in Boston, and feels lucky to have that job. She and her father recently moved to Boston from Philadelphia after her mother and siblings died from smallpox. Her father is a sailmaker and she is tall for her age, so she works for the judge and puts up with his abuse. But then, the Redcoats are routed from Boston and loyalists are evacuating. What will happen to Elsbeth? Her father wants her to evacuate, but she wants to stay. 

This first-person narrative drew me in from the start. Elsbeth is plucky, smart and feisty. Through Elsbeth, Anderson conveys the danger and uncertainty of the seige of Boston. As if the battle between the colonists and British was not enough, smallpox is rearing its ugly head in Boston. The resistance to vaccination is eerily similar to modern day antivaxers. 

Anderson is a masterful researcher, but also skilled in making her characters relatable. I loved this. 

#tbt: Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson

Image: Simon & Schuster

Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson. 336 p. Seeds of America #1. Atheneum/ Simon & Schuster, October, 2008. 9781416905851. Own.

#tbt features Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson. This is the first book in the author's Seeds of America trilogy. Isabel is looking forward to being freed along with her disabled sister upon her mistress' death. Unfortunately, the woman's heir has other plans. He sells them to the Lockton family of New York City. They are Loyalists during the beginning of the American Revolution. Isabel meets Curzon, who is enslaved to a Patriot family. He wants her to spy for the Patriots. Isabel agrees, but does not agree with Curzon's belief that fighting for the Patriots will result in liberty for them.

This layered, character-driven novel has a strong sense of place and explores the multifaceted reasons behind the colonists' fight for freedom juxtaposed against the enslaved people's desire for freedom. 

Chains was a National Book Award Finalist and won the Scott O'Dell Historical Fiction Award. It was named an ALA Notable Book as well as a YALSA Best book and many state book awards.

The trilogy continued with Forge in 2010, and concluded with Ashes in 2016. 

Waiting on Wednesday: Rebellion, 1776 by Laurie Halse Anderson

Image: Simon & Schuster

Rebellion 1776 by Laurie Halse Anderson. 410 p. Atheneum/ Caitlin Dlouhey/ Simon & Schuster, April 1, 2025. 9781416968269.

Waiting on Wednesday features Rebellion 1776 by Laurie Halse Anderson. I'm a huge fan of Ms. Anderson. Her contemporary realistic fiction books are gripping and intense, but her historical fiction novels are as well. I can't wait for this.

Publisher synopsis: From New York Times bestselling author Laurie Halse Anderson comes an eerily timely historical fiction middle grade adventure about a girl struggling to survive amid a smallpox epidemic, the public’s fear of inoculation, and the seething Revolutionary War.

In the spring of 1776, thirteen-year-old Elsbeth Culpepper wakes to the sound of cannons. It’s the Siege of Boston, the Patriots’ massive drive to push the Loyalists out that turns the city into a chaotic war zone. Elsbeth’s father—her only living relative—has gone missing, leaving her alone and adrift in a broken town while desperately seeking employment to avoid the orphanage.

Just when things couldn’t feel worse, the smallpox epidemic sweeps across Boston. Now, Bostonians must fight for their lives against an invisible enemy in addition to the visible one. While a treatment is being frantically fine-tuned, thousands of people rush in from the countryside begging for inoculation. At the same time, others refuse protection, for the treatment is crude at best and at times more dangerous than the disease itself.

Elsbeth, who had smallpox as a small child and is now immune, finds work taking care of a large, wealthy family with discord of their own as they await a turn at inoculation, but as the epidemic and the revolution rage on, will she find her father?

Fact Friday: Why Longfellow Lied: the truth about Paul Revere's Midnight Ride by Jeff Lantos

Why Longfellow Lied: the truth about Paul Revere's Midnight Ride by Jeff Lantos. 160 p. Charlesbridge, August 3, 2021. 9781580899338. (Review of e-arc courtesy of publisher.) (Cover image below. Blogger kept putting it down there instead of up here.)

Happy Friday! Fact Friday features Why Longfellow Lied: the truth about Paul Revere's Midnight Ride by Jeff Lantos. "Listen my children, and you shall hear..." Sound familiar? Those are the first words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's famous poem, Paul Revere's Ride. It was written in 1860 as the United States of America was on the brink of civil war. While it is a poem that many, including myself assume is historically accurate, it is actually filled with inaccuracies. Very little documentation about that fateful night is available BECAUSE IT WAS A SECRET MISSION. Colonists were not discussing Paul Revere's role in the relaying of information about British troop movement in the days and weeks after BECAUSE IT WAS A SECRET! Still, the poem endures, and rightly so, for it is a lovely, lively, inspiring poem.

Mr. Lentos examines the poem line by line and parses the fact from fiction in this absolutely fascinating book-definitely one to revisit over and over to absorb it all. It is opiously illustrated with maps, and photos of engravings and art. Back matter includes exhaustive source notes and a six-page bibliography. I can't wait to reread this when it publishes in August. The seventh grade social studies teacher at my school can't wait either! First purchase!

Non-Fiction Monday: Revolutionary Friends: General George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette

by Selene Castrovilla. 40 p. Boyds Mills Press, April, 2013. 9781590788806. (Finished copy courtesy of publisher in exchange for a review.)

In July of 1777, the Marquis de Lafayette arrived in America with the express hope of meeting General George Washington and aiding the patriots' cause. He was nineteen, left his own king against orders, paid his own way to America and suffered for "fifty-four stomach-wrenching days at sea," where he brushed up on his English.

When at last he found himself in the same room as the general, he had to overcome prejudice against the previous French advisors. Still, France was a powerful ally, so Washington invited Lafayette to stay with him. Unfortunately, Washington could not get Congress to approve a commission for Lafayette even though the young soldier was eager to prove his mettle.

The two grew close. So much so that when Lafayette was injured in battle, Washington instructed the doctor to take care of him as if he were his own son.

Then, the format abruptly changes from leisurely picture book to almost an afterword, with three pages of text and spot art. This is followed by a four page timeline, pages with suggestions for places to visit and books to read and a short glossary of the French phrases that are liberally sprinkled throughout the text. The final page features a pair of portraits of the two gentlemen that hang in the U.S. House of Representatives. The folk art rendering of them bear little resemblance to the portraits. The illustrations are curiously flat. 

I'm a huge fan of picture books in the middle school social studies classes and had high hopes for this one. It's obviously meticulously researched and nearly every page features a text box in the shape of a parchment featuring a quote by Lafayette from letters home. It's almost too laden with detail to provide an impressionistic zing. Still, in the hands of a gifted teacher such as the one that teaches grade seven social studies at my school...