Chris Aldrich reviewed Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes
Review of 'Johnny Tremain' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
I somehow missed being forced to read this in grade school, so I'm going back to take a look, particularly as I'm going to try to work my way through some of the Newberry Medalists I'd somehow managed to miss as well.
Overall an interesting plot and likely well researched as apparently Esther Forbes won a Pulitzer Prize for another book she released as a historian the same year this was released. Interestingly, this is probably the better remembered and more widely read book of the two. I'll have to go back and look at her other effort.
Though the plot was generally interesting, it would have been somewhat more interesting if there were either a follow up book or some other sort of coda about Tremain's ultimate story, though for dramatic purposes ending it the way it was done was probably best though somewhat too quick for my taste. …
I somehow missed being forced to read this in grade school, so I'm going back to take a look, particularly as I'm going to try to work my way through some of the Newberry Medalists I'd somehow managed to miss as well.
Overall an interesting plot and likely well researched as apparently Esther Forbes won a Pulitzer Prize for another book she released as a historian the same year this was released. Interestingly, this is probably the better remembered and more widely read book of the two. I'll have to go back and look at her other effort.
Though the plot was generally interesting, it would have been somewhat more interesting if there were either a follow up book or some other sort of coda about Tremain's ultimate story, though for dramatic purposes ending it the way it was done was probably best though somewhat too quick for my taste.
Most interesting is the time period in which this was written and the state of American nationalism at the original event, at the time of its writing, at the point that I would most likely have read it circa 1985 and now at the beginning of 2013. This is the thing which has most markedly changed for the time periods.
Almost as fun as reading it is reading some of the reviews of it on goodreads as many are written by youngsters who just don't understand history or why it's important.