You Say You Want a Revolution?

The shot heard round the world. The Boston Tea Party. "Give Me liberty or give me death!" All too familiar phrases to us, but what about your booktalk listeners? How can you turn a series of long-past events into a story that will excite and inspire your audience?

Start by reading the riveting opening chapter of Russell Freedman's Give Me Liberty!: The Story Of the Declaration Of Independence (Holiday House, 2000, Gr. 4–8):

"William Gray, a master rope maker, knew there was going to be trouble in Boston that night. He wanted no part of it. As dusk fell, he closed the shutters of his house and shop. After supper, he sent his apprentice, fourteen-year-old Peter Slater, upstairs and locked the boy in his room. Peter waited until the house was quiet. Then he knotted his bedding together, hung it out the window, and slid to freedom. He wasn't a rope-maker's apprentice for nothing."

Peter was on his way to the Boston Tea Party. More than 300 chests of English tea were dumped into Boston Harbor that night in 1773, the first act of rebellion in America's quest for liberty. Can your booktalk audience imagine what it might be like to climb aboard a huge, silent ship in the middle of the night? Freedman's book, packed with pictures, provides young readers with a thrilling introduction to the American Revolution.

What inspired a group of men from 13 American colonies to gather in Philadelphia and put their lives on the line? With a single stroke of a pen, each man became a traitor to Britain and the King. These brave patriots could have been hanged, disemboweled, and cut into four bloody pieces for what they did. In fact, some did lose their homes, families, and fortunes—all for signing their names to the Declaration of Independence.

Natalie Bober's Countdown to Independence: a Revolution of Ideas in England and the American Colonies: 1760–1776 (S &S/Atheneum, 2001, Gr. 5–up) recalls the story behind that amazing document. Back in England, William Pitt believed the colonists' rights were being violated. During a heated debate in Parliament, one man asserted that Americans must obey British tax laws. "Since when were the Americans emancipated from Britain?" the man asked. Pitt coolly replied, "The gentleman asks, when were the colonies emancipated? But I desire to know, when were they made slaves?" However, at the same time the colonials demanded freedom from England, many of them kept slaves themselves.

Lighten up your booktalk with Deborah Chandra and Madeleine Comora's George Washington's Teeth (Farrar, 2003 Gr. 1–up). This book's sprightly verse and snappy illustrations seem intended for young children, but the book will delight even teenagers. General Washington, commander of the Patriot forces, had more on his mind than battles and bayonets. He lost his teeth, one by one, through the long war (while crossing the Delaware he lost two!)—no wonder Washington never smiled for any of those portraits. Your listeners will pity the general, and even you'll wonder how on earth he managed to win a war when his teeth were always aching.

Dennis Brindell Fradin's The Signers: The Fifty-Six Stories Behind the Declaration of Independence. (Walker, 2002, Gr. 4–up) shows that there's a fascinating life behind each of the signatures. Did you know that U.S. coins are engraved with the word "Liberty," thanks to Abraham Clark, a signer from New Jersey? Or that Clark's cohort Francis Hopkinson was probably the designer of the Stars and Stripes, and not Betsy Ross?

To fully appreciate our present way of life, it's necessary to know the story of the Declaration of Independence—how much our country's founders believed in it, and how much was at stake. The story that first began when the signers added their signatures to the bottom of that fragile piece of parchment is still evolving today.