Kid-friendly historical fiction, American Revolutionary War-style?
May 29, 2017 6:54 PM   Subscribe

My nine-year-old says: "Please ask Metafilter to find me more books like Johnny Tremain." Looking for YA historical fiction/graphic novels set at points between the Mayflower and the American Revolutionary War.

She enjoyed Robert Lawson's Ben and Me: An Astonishing Life of Benjamin Franklin By His Good Mouse Amos and his Mr. Revere and I, and loved Esther Forbes's Johnny Tremain; older books, and books with denser prose and plot, are welcome (Magic Treehouse strikes out with her. She doesn't mind elements of time travel, but nothing too silly. The talking mouse and talking horse were big hits though, so go figure. She's OK with the Horrible Histories, but prefers a story to frame the history.). Yes, I will ask the local librarian too, but what can you suggest in the meantime?
posted by MonkeyToes to Education (36 answers total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
You may want to preview these for content first, but My Brother Sam Is Dead by Collier and Sarah Bishop by O'Dell are both award winners and are set during the American Revolution.
posted by bookmammal at 7:02 PM on May 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


Came here to say The Witch of Blackbird Pond. Also, Tituba of Salem Village by Ann Petry.
posted by Melismata at 7:03 PM on May 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


What about the Dear America book series? There are two that I remember that are set around the time you're looking for: A Journey to the New World and The Winter of Red Snow.
posted by yeahyeahrealcute at 7:08 PM on May 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


In second grade our teacher read us Toliver's Secret, about a girl who disguises herself as a boy to deliver a secret message to Washington.
posted by lharmon at 7:09 PM on May 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


When I was a little older than your daughter, I liked April Morning by Howard Fast.
posted by holborne at 7:27 PM on May 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


When my son was in 4th grade they read Blood on the River, which is about the Jamestown settlers, then took a field trip to Jamestown. Lots of grim detail about the difficulties of daily life, the kids enjoyed it. Of course, the Jamestown settlement was 13 yrs before the Mayflower landed so it's a tiny bit outside of your time window but still cool.

Also, not a book but my homeschooling friends have kids who were wild about the Liberty's Kids series on PBS, and you can watch it online.
posted by selfmedicating at 7:30 PM on May 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


I haven't reread it in years so I don't know how it holds up, but I always really liked Silver for General Washington when I was a kid.
posted by worldswalker at 7:32 PM on May 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


Best answer: My wife (the 7th grade social studies teacher) recommends:

Fever 1793
A Break with Charity
Chains (although with a warning that "some shit goes down" that might not be OK for a 9-year-old)
and seconds Blood on the River.
posted by Betelgeuse at 7:34 PM on May 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


Besides the two yeahyeahrealcute mentions, there are several others in the Dear America, My America, and My Name is America series set in the Colonial and Rev. War periods. All are fictional diaries of kids living then (with other series' titles covering different periods of U.S history if she likes the format well enough to explore further).
posted by ClingClang at 7:38 PM on May 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


Hitty! She may feel like she's too old for a book about a doll, but no!
posted by 8603 at 7:49 PM on May 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


A Gathering of Days by Joan W. Blos.
posted by needs more cowbell at 7:52 PM on May 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


I loved Scott O'Dell's Sarah Bishop at just that age. (It definitely has Revolutionary War-era violence, and I remember that someone is tarred and feathered, but I was a pretty squeamish child and it was fine for me.)

Also I just had the most remarkable gut reaction to just the title of A Gathering of Days, so I probably loved that as well!
posted by kalimac at 8:16 PM on May 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


Oh! And the Felicity books, from the American Girl empire, if you can get ahold of them. Standard warning that they are tied-in to a rather expensive doll with hilariously expensive accessories.
posted by kalimac at 8:19 PM on May 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


Nonfiction: George Washington, Spymaster by Thomas B. Allen.
posted by Jeanne at 8:22 PM on May 29, 2017




I grew up a few hundred yards from a road that in colonial times was a dirt trail and one of the places depicted in Conrad Richter's The Light in the Forest. Kid friendly? I guess it depends on the kid.
posted by LeLiLo at 8:55 PM on May 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Marguerite Henry's Justin Morgan Had a Horse, Cinnabar, the One O'Clock Fox (who enjoys eluding George Washington ), Benjamin West and His Cat Grimalkin

Lois Lenski's Bound Girl of Cobble Hill,Ocean-Born Mary,Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison
posted by brujita at 9:07 PM on May 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


Came to suggest My Brother Sam Is Dead. Definitely take a look at it first; two scenes in the book have returned unbidden to me through the years.
posted by infinitewindow at 9:08 PM on May 29, 2017


Once a fixture of any American library's YA section, books by Stephen W. Meader have unfortunately now become rare, although they're exactly what this young reader's looking for. Not to worry, all are still available through Southern Skies. Many of them are set before or during the Revolutionary War, like Guns For The Saratoga, A Blow For Liberty, and The Black Buccaneer (which is available at Project Gutenberg!)
posted by Rash at 9:17 PM on May 29, 2017


Plus one for Witch of Blackbird Pond. I love that book to this very day.
posted by fairlynearlyready at 10:26 PM on May 29, 2017 [4 favorites]




Carry On, Mr Bowditch by Jean Lee Latham is still one of my favorites. That, Johnny Tremain, and Red Cap by Wisler (Civil War, not American Revolution) were the trifecta, and their well-worn pages still have a place in my bookshelves.
posted by chaostician at 11:48 PM on May 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


I remember loving I'm Deborah Sampson so much when I was about nine that I went on to seek out Deborah Sampson: The Girl Who Went to War when it came out years later. I especially liked that it was a true story about a woman.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:49 AM on May 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


I never read the above-mentioned I'm Deborah Sampson but I loved Patricia Clapp's books Constance: A Story of Early Plymouth and Witches' Children (about "afflicted girls" in 1692 Salem, seems to be packaged here with Jane-Emily, which I think is more of a ghost story).
posted by mskyle at 7:36 AM on May 30, 2017 [3 favorites]


I really liked Ann Rinaldi when I was a little older but the might be good for your daughter? The Fifth of March is about the Boston Massacre and she has other books set around the same time period.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 8:35 AM on May 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


Oh yeah, nthing My Brother Sam is Dead, too. I read it around 5th grade, when I was ten.

We read The Light in the Forest in history class when we were in 7th grade, so I would say it's definitely kid friendly.
posted by holborne at 8:43 AM on May 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


The Notorious Benedict Arnold is SO SO good. It's a biography rather than fiction, so maybe not exactly on-point, but it's youth-oriented and fascinating. We did the audiobook version and everyone from 6 to 36 was totally hooked.
posted by Ausamor at 9:21 AM on May 30, 2017


Lenski's Puritan Adventure too.
posted by brujita at 10:29 AM on May 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Hi, it's me, daughter of MonkeyToes.

Thank you very much for all the suggestions!
posted by MonkeyToes at 11:38 AM on May 30, 2017 [7 favorites]


Oh, man, Witches' Children blew me away (I don't think I was much older than your daughter when I read it).

The Witch of Blackbird Pond, definitely (I realized after moving to Connecticut as an adult how much of my affinity for the place was sparked by that book).

And Hitty (Rachel Field, as the author wasn't given above) is wonderful--not strictly Revolutionary-era, but the fact that it goes further than that is actually pretty cool.

I'm betting that somewhere down the line she would really like Joan Aiken's children's books (The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Black Hearts in Battersea, and Nightbirds on Nantucket in particular). The latter is primarily set in America (circa 19th century--much of the terminology in this book is similar to Moby Dick), while the others are British. They were my introduction to alternative history and I loved them dearly. They just have something of the same flavor as the others mentioned here and came flooding back in the company of happy memories.
posted by dlugoczaj at 12:27 PM on May 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


Calico Captive! This novel by Elizabeth George Speare has stayed in my head for nearly 40 years. Based on a diary published in 1807 and set in the 1750s, it details the life of a New Hampshire girl who was captured and sold north into Montreal during the French and Indian War.

I haven't re-read this novel since I was young; you might want to scan through it to make sure the portrayal of American Indians is... sensitive.
posted by workerant at 1:08 PM on May 30, 2017


It's been quite some time, but I remember The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle being a great adventure story.

(I'm going to nth Blackbird Pond but anti-nth Calico Captive and preemptively Sign of the Beaver by the same author, for "showing their age re: portrayals of Native Americans" reasons.)
posted by bettafish at 1:55 PM on May 30, 2017


Guts and Glory just published a couple of weeks ago.
posted by lyssabee at 5:53 PM on May 30, 2017


Not entirely sure how appropriate it is for her age, and it's not a book, but the musical "1776" is a ton of fun. There's a bit of swearing in it, but not much worse than what you see on TV these days. Of course, she has to like musicals, too...
posted by lhauser at 8:37 PM on May 30, 2017


Rebecca's War and Redcoat in Boston, both by Ann Finlayson, were really memorable to me for some reason. They have almost no internet presence, and I haven't read them in years, so who knows how they've held up.

I found a bunch of lists of books while trying to hunt those down, and am surprised to see how many I vividly remember reading ages ago.
posted by sepviva at 8:56 PM on May 30, 2017


Compass South is a good graphic novel (the first of a series) about kids in that time who go on an adventure.
posted by jillithd at 6:10 AM on May 31, 2017


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