Skip to main content

Henry and the Cannons

By


Henry and the Cannons:  An Extraordinary True Story of the American Revolution
by Don Brown
Roaring Book Press, 2013.  Unpaged.  Nonfiction

     Henry Knox has gotten a lot of good children's press lately.  Nathan Hale's wildly popular graphic novel/history One Dead Spy features Henry Knox, as does (obviously) Anita Silvey's recent Henry Knox: Bookseller, Soldier, Patriot. Don Brown adds a wonderful and wonderfully well illustrated item to the Knox canon (get it?) with this book, focusing on Henry Knox's bringing fifty-nine cannons captured at the Battle of Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York to Boston so George Washington and his army could root the British out of the city.  The trip would have felled lesser men than Henry and his volunteers.  Winter storms on land and water slowed the men down and made them miserable.  Cannons on sledges broke through the ice and had to be pulled out of the frigid water.  After fifty days of hard travel Henry Knox, bookseller, and his men arrived on the hills above Boston allowing George Washington to drive away the British and retake the city.  Don Brown is one of our greatest historians for young people. His pictures render times and places exquisitely  and his texts are straightforward without being condescending. Four stars for this one, and for everything else he has ever done.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dude, That's Rude! (Get Some Manners) by Pamela Espeland & Elizabeth Verdick

By
If there's one book today's kids need to read, it is Dude, That's Rude! (Get Some Manners) . The authors provide a fun format for teaching etiquette to children. They discuss proper behavior at home, at school, at other people's homes and in public places. The information is completely up-to-date with cellphone manners and netiquette included. Fun, cartoony illustrations are on practically every page giving the book great visual appeal. This book is perfect for boys and girls in the fourth grade or older. WARNING: Bodily functions are discussed.
Post a Comment
Read more

Faces of the Moon by Bob Crelin

By loo
Faces of the Moon by Bob Crelin Illustrated by Leslie Evans Charlesburg; 2009; unpaged Faces of the Moon is a short nonfiction book that describes the different phases of the moon and why the moon appears like it does on certain nights. This book is short and sweet so even the youngest of moon lovers will enjoy it. The layout is simplistic and easy to follow. I don’t know much about the moon so I found it very interesting.
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: The Factory

By
The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...
Post a Comment
Read more