Heroes of History, Part II

In an earlier post I shared how students used biography picture books to practice summarizing, recognizing opposing viewpoints, and citing textual evidence. Using the four-step process modeled there, students cut to the chase to tell what was "most needed to know" about their famous man or woman from history. So what's next?

Below I've shared some of the biography extensions and report options which students have completed over the years in my classroom. I'm sure you'll find a new one to try out!

Time Machine

As students read their biography, they take the usual notes, either on a prepared outline or free hand. When writing the report, however, the students pretend that they're able to travel back in time to interview this famous person. The most important details are then summarized in a question-answer format which reads in a more interesting way than a standard report. The paragraph students generated in the four-step summary process (above) serves nicely as the interview's introduction.

I've provided a sample of the interview format, but I highly encourage you to have students brainstorm their own interview questions as well. The brainstorming and sequencing process is an excellent introduction to the research process where students will need to formulate inquiries for themselves. Students will also discover that the unique experiences of any given person will in large part dictate the type of questions which should be asked. When reading Who Says Women Can't be Doctors? by Tanya Lee Stone, for example, one of my students was amazed to discover that Elizabeth Blackwell was turned down by twenty-eight different schools in her pursuit of attending medical school. "I think I would have quit trying after the first ten schools said no," the student remarked, and I wondered what Elizabeth Blackwell herself would have said to her in return.

Some years we presented these in a talk show format, with partners playing the role of interviewer, and other years students chose to dress as the person they were portraying. 

Journal

24 Ready to Go Genre Book Reports is a wonderful teacher resource full of ideas for responding to books, and one project from this resource which students have enjoyed is creating a journal.

When I first began teaching, I assigned students a similar journal format, requiring at least three entries that reflected events from the person's childhood or teen years, university or training years, and years of notable achievement. Additional entries could be written at students' discretion.

With the popularity of scrapbooking, students began asking if they could include artifacts in their journals. Projects soon included replica photos, sketches, tickets, maps, currency, and so on. The journal covers likewise became more creative, with students creating covers that resembled television sets, suitcases, trading cards, shipping crates, cars, space shuttles, hats, jerseys, and wanted posters. 

A wonderful set of biography books which rely upon a similar concepts of "snapshots" from a person's life is the 10 Day series by David Colbert, which so far includes books on Anne Frank, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, and Martin Luther King, Jr. If all students in your classroom read the same biography or autobiography, they could likewise focus on the ten most pivotal days of that person's life, with students possibly pairing up and writing a first-person account of one of these days.

As mentioned above, the paragraph students generate in the four-step summary process can serve as an introduction to the diary, as the entries themselves may not provide ample information for some readers to understand the importance of the subject's achievements.

Made in Quotes Cover

Lessons Learned

One of my students' favorite parts of the Time Machine assignment (above) is when they, in the guise of their famous person, are asked to give advice to future generations. Putting themselves "into the shoes" of this famous person and distilling the experiences of a lifetime into a bit of sage advice is a difficult yet rewarding task.

In Lessons Learned, students generate eight to ten tips that their hero might pass on to future generations. The advice can be published as beautiful quotes, using a quote making site such as Quozio, Quotes Cover, ReciteThis, or ProQuoter.

Here, the four-step biography summary is used as an introduction piece that acquaints the reader with the giver of wise counsel. The quotes themselves can be printed, or embedded into a Google Slides or similar sharing platform.

Timeline

Since most students best understand a biography in strict chronological order, creating a timeline would be a good way for them to explain and illustrate important life events.

For creating an online timeline, I highly recommend Hstry.co, which I discussed at length in a previous post. Check out that post to see how easy it is to get started with Hstry.

Telescoping Story

Telescopic Text allows writers a chance to share a story just one bit at a time, while revealing small and large thoughts alike in a measured manner. You can best understand this site by checking out the site creator's example. To see how a text is entered and edited, and to see a pretty impressive Telescopic Text created by a seven year-old, check out the video below.



Students could use this site to create a slowly expanding narrative of their hero's life. What's great about the site is that it encourages elaboration, a tough topic to teach students who are often trying to write as little as possible.

Caveat: Students should register for their own accounts and learn the difference between saving and publishing (saving allows for future edits; publishing does not).

Newspaper Clipping

A newspaper clipping describing an important event from a person's life is a terrific way to get students to focus upon what really merits attention. The Fodey Newspaper Generator provides a very short format clipping (about 1000 total characters), which is just enough to provide facts without the clutter of details. The clipping to the right, for example, was created in response to A Nation's Hope: The Story of Boxing Legend Joe Louis, written by Matt De La Peña and illustrated by Kadir Nelson. While the picture book chronicles Louis' rise as a fighter, the newspaper clipping captures just a highlight of that life.


This newspaper generator (which I found at the Learning Never Stops blog) allows for more space and also an image, but fills in the rest of the front page with two nonsense articles. Students would need to screen shot and crop out the other articles if they didn't want them to show.

In addition to a stand-alone activity, the newspaper clipping could also be used as an artifact in the Journal assignment above (some students have also used the movie clapboard generator at the Fodey site for their journal project). 

He Said, She Said 

I previously discussed Google Story Builder in another blog, and I'm still a fan. It's a very neat way to show differing points of view. Take a second to check out my review.  

Here's a short Google Docs Story I created after reading Mary Walker Wears the Pants: The True Story of the Doctor, Reformer, and Civil War Hero, written by Cheryl Harness and illustrated by Carlo Molinari. Note that activist Mary Walker disagrees with what a fabricated nemesis named "Nathan Properbody" has to say.

Students can create both sides of such a fictional dialogue, or two students can take on opposing roles and write from each viewpoint. The process will need some trial and error, and the resulting pieces can't be long, but it's a very different type of writing requiring some critical and creative thinking.

Looking for more tech tools to assess student learning? Be sure to check out this collection of over thirty of the best free sites I've found to assess students at all stages of learning process.

Heroes of History

Read below for Marceau's amazing story!

One popular conversation in education centers around "What is worth knowing?" To that conversation I'd like to add the question, "Who is worth knowing?"

When I ask students to name someone famous and the first reply I hear is "Kim Kardashian," I die just a little bit inside. Students don't seem to have an understanding of, or appreciation for, the lives of great men and women who changed the course of history. 

But biography picture books can help to remedy that.

Wiser Words Were Never Spoken

My high school daughter recently took her SAT and was describing the writing prompt she was given. She paraphrased the quote and named the speaker (which I won't reveal here), and then described for me the way in which she had crafted her response. 

I finally asked, "And did you include why that quote was so important, considering the person who said it?" 

Her reply: "Well, I had heard of him, but I didn't really know who he was." 

Opportunity lost.

Regardless of what some might have us believe (the PARCC assessment comes to mind), historical context does, in fact, matter when examining any piece of text, and history is the product of those who made it.

Students therefore need knowledge of heroes of history.

Getting Started

Before showing students even a single biography, I gave them some practice summarizing current events articles from Tween Tribune using the tried and true 5Ws and 1H. This required a significant shift in students' responses; after all, I had been encouraging them for months to elaborate, and now they were being asked to summarize an entire article in a single sentence. 

The Tween Tribune article "It's Even Too Cold for Polar Bears!", for example, was summed up as follows:

Due to her specialized diet designed to eliminate a thick layer of insulating fat, Lincoln Park Zoo's resident polar bear Anana had to be moved indoors last Monday during Chicago's record-low temperatures.

Note that in addition to the basic facts, the sentence also provides students with a model for writing a cause/effect relationship.

After some independent practice with longer articles (requiring even greater ability to discern important facts), we were ready to move on to trade books. 

You may want to follow along on the assignment guidesheet which you're welcome to download in pdf (or Word) and be sure to grab the blank sheet as well (also available as a Word doc). You'll notice that the instructional steps below differ somewhat from those given to students for their own work.

Just the Facts

 

For my mentor text, I selected Robert Burleigh's George Bellows: Painter with a Punch!, in part because while George Bellows' art might be familiar to students, the man as an artist was not. I also planned to return to this text in a later lesson on using opposing viewpoints to construct argumentative writing.

In their notebooks, students jotted down a list of the 5Ws and 1H (Who, What, Where, When, Why, How) and were asked to listen for those facts as I read the book aloud. I read the majority of the book, stopping to monitor understanding and also to ask if any of our facts had been discovered.

By story's end we had 

Who: George Bellows
What: painted pictures that weren't beautiful
Where: New York City
When: early 1900s
Why: to show emotions and power
How: showing scenes of everyday city life

Cobbled together after some discussion and experimentation, these facts became a fact-fixing sentence that sounded like this:

In the early 1900s, George Bellows and other artists in New York City’s Trashcan School began painting pictures that showed the ugly, gritty, common scenes of the city in order to capture the emotion and power of everyday life.

Prove It!

Students knew that this was coming. What textual evidence backed up what we just stated? We found several sentences which might work, and finally settled on just a snippet of one quote, which we placed into a sentence that included both the author and book:

According to author Robert Burleigh in the book George Bellows: Painter with a Punch, Bellows thought scenes of everyday life were beautiful and was “determined to find them.”

So What?

But then I asked, "So what? Why did that matter?" And here's where students begin to see the light. Those people from history who changed the way others think, believe, or act tend to be those worth remembering. In the case of George Bellows, he and other students of Robert Henri went against the traditional belief that the artist's role was to paint what was beautiful. 

This led us to construct an opposing viewpoint statement to precede the summary sentence we had already drafted:

For centuries, most people believed that artists should focus upon what is beautiful and romantic, but one artist named George Bellows thought differently.

Legacy

This, naturally, led to the question of legacy. "What lasting impact did this person's life and work have upon us? Why should they be remembered today?"

I had to provide a bit of background here, discussing with students that at this time in history, many schools of art were wrestling with the role of the artist and the artist's responsibility to represent "real life." Eventually we came up with this closing sentence:

Artists of the Ashcan School helped others to explore "bold new worlds" while at the same time recording, in full color, what New York City looked like one hundred years ago.

Pieced together, the finished summary read as follows:

For centuries, most people believed that artists should focus upon what is beautiful and romantic, but one artist named George Bellows thought differently. In the early 1900s, George Bellows and other artists in New York City’s Trashcan School began painting pictures that showed the ugly, gritty, common scenes of the city in order to capture the emotion and power of everyday life. According to author Robert Burleigh in the book George Bellows: Painter with a Punch, Bellows thought scenes of everyday life were beautiful and was “determined to find them.” Artists of the Ashcan School helped others to explore "bold new worlds" while at the same time recording, in full color, what New York City looked like one hundred years ago.

An impressive summary once completed. But, could students could do it on their own?

Training Wheels

Armed with this model, students jotted down the sentence order in their notebooks as a quick reference:

I. Opposing Viewpoint 
II. 5Ws and 1H
III. Textual Evidence
IV. Legacy

Each student was then assigned a picture book biography from numerous examples chosen by the teacher. Some teachers might be surprised that students aren't allowed at this point to choose their own books, but I feel it's important that students approach the exercise with no preconceived notions about the person they're studying.

Students read the books for homework and completed the four step process outlined on the guidesheet. The following day they shared their first attempt with a classmate and made revisions based on that peer's feedback. I then had students switch books with any other student in the class apart from the one who had heard their summary. This guaranteed that by day three, two students would have read each book and could get together to compare paragraphs. This sharing led to much more productive revisions, as both students had intimate knowledge of the text and could offer more specific feedback on not only form, but also content.

I was surprised by students' success with the process. While some, as expected, followed the Bellows model precisely, simply swapping out details as needed, others departed from the model. A couple of students tried switching sentence orders when writing summaries of their second books, while others tried different grammatical structures while maintaining the sentence order we had established.

One student, not thrilled when handed Marcel Marceau: Master of Mime, was amazed to learn that this entertainer played a major role in the French Resistance, and led many Jewish children to safety. His paragraph, which he knew fell far short of paying homage to this unsung hero, reads:

Many people might think that miming is a fairly recent type of drama, but it is actually an ancient form of art that, because of sound movies, might have been forgotten; however, a talented young Frenchman named Marcel Marceau revived its popularity. After serving bravely in the Resistance against the Nazis during World War II, Marceau followed his dream of becoming an actor capable of moving the audience to laughter or tears, all without saying a word. According to author Gloria Spielman in Marcel Marceau: Master of Mime, "By the time he died in 2007, Marcel had revived the ancient and almost forgotten art of silence." Because of Marceau's work, many performers who followed in his footsteps realize that it isn't what you say, but how your facial expressions and body gestures convey it.

Most surprising to many students was how much they enjoyed reading about people they had never even heard of (many students had already made plans for the next book they wanted to read). The skepticism I witnessed on the first day when distributing books was replaced with enthusiasm by day two of the assignment. And since then, students have been asking to do the assignment again, and many have naturally been begging to read biographies of their own choosing.

So What's Next?

While this lesson can certainly stand alone as an exercise in summarizing, I can see these simple summary paragraphs serving as introductions to other types of responses to biography, current events, and history.

In my next post I'll share some possible extension activities, as well as some of the more popular titles which students enjoyed.

Betsy's Day at the Game

Peanuts, Cracker Jack, cotton candy, and hot dogs! Those are my fondest memories of the ball park, and they certainly top my daughters' lists as well. But one equally hallowed tradition of baseball had been fading from the American scene, so I'm glad to see a picture book that's bringing it back.

Betsy's Day at the Game, written by Greg Bancroft and illustrated by Katherine Blackmore, describes a young girl's visit to the ballpark with her grandfather. The book captures all there is to love about baseball, and that's because author Greg Bancroft seems to be a baseball fan first and foremost. His descriptions and Katherine Blackmore's images capture the sights, sounds, smells, and (my favorite part) tastes of the ballpark. Via their narrative, we spend a day vicariously at the park. Simple enough, right?

As the story progresses and the game begins, however, we realize that much more is taking place. Betsy and Grandpa are teaching us, step by step and in plain English, how to keep score. For the those who are as clueless as me, keeping score in baseball goes way beyond tallying runs!

Codes and symbols are entered onto a scorecard, effectively chronicling every offensive and defensive play of the game. From what friends have told me, baseball fans can read a score book and see the entire game played out in their heads in the same way that musicians can read musical notation and actually "hear the song."

So while I started out as a true scoring novice, by book's end I had a pretty good idea of the whole process. And trust me, if I can figure it out, anyone can! Betsy's Day at the Game would definitely score a home run with any young baseball fan. Using the handy scorecards supplied in the back of the book, fans could easily follow along with and score their favorite team at the park or on TV.

Some Recommended Baseball Resources:

• Aspiring writers will want to check out Greg Bancroft's 10 Things I Didn't Know Until I Published My First Book. If you're planning on breaking into the book biz, you should read this article! 
• See more of Katherine Blackmore's illustrations at her site.
• Check out a tutorial on scoring if you want more examples, plus the formulas to figure out all the stats you would ever need. The actual scorecard isn't as nice as the one in the back of Betsy's Day at the Game, however.
• The Baseball for Kids site features lots of extras for young fans of baseball.
• Taking your child to the park for the first time? Definitely make a Plan B! As parents, we know how attention spans can wane as kids become hot, tired, cranky, over-sugared, and restless. TeachMama has a fabulous set of suggestions for surviving your outing using Kid-Friendly Learning During Baseball Games. 
• Check out some earlier posts on the Teach with Picture Books site including Going Extra Innings with Baseball Picture Books (books and lots of sites for kids about baseball), A League of Their Own: Women in Baseball, and Girls Got Game (incredible female athletes). Let Them Play, discussed in an earlier post on Black History, is another baseball story from history that kids find incredibly intriguing.
  
• With 42, the Jackie Robinson movie, releasing in theaters this weekend, younger readers might be interested in learning more about this courageous hero of baseball history. For readers in grades 2-5, I highly recommend Jackie Robinson: American Hero, written by the star's own daughter, Sharon Robinson. This transitional book features not only the perfect blend of images and text, but also the perfect blend of backstory and biography. Sharon Robinson provides young readers with just enough historical context to understand and appreciate what made Jackie Robinson's accomplishments incredible not only for his time, but for all of time, and not only in sports history, but in our nation's history. If you're a teacher hoping to engage your reluctant readers with chapter books, this one is a winner!

Girls Got Game

Over the past week I read dozens of books on women and their accomplishments, and was quite simply astounded by the number of excellent titles available. But the following books stuck in my mind above and beyond the others, so for that reason I’d love to share them with you.

America's Champion Swimmer: Gertrude Ederle, written by David A. Adler and illustrated by Terry Widener, retells the childhood and achievements of Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel. After nearly drowning in a pond, Trudy is taught by her father at an early age to swim. Tying a rope around her waist and placing her in a river, Trudy’s father tells her to paddle like a dog. Once she’s the master of the dog paddle, she copies the swim strokes of older sister Margaret and can soon swim better than any of her family or friends.

After winning her first big race at age fifteen, swimming the seventeen miles from Manhattan to Sandy Hook, winning Olympic medals at the 1924 games in Paris, and setting twenty-nine U.S. and world records, she’s ready to take on the ultimate challenge: the twenty mile swim across the English Channel. At just nineteen years old she attempts to do what only five men, and no women, had ever been able to accomplish.

Braving extreme cold, choppy waters, stinging jellyfish, and sharks, Trudy’s first attempt fails when her trainer, fearing the swimmer had swallowed too much sea water, pulled her from the Channel. Just one touch disqualifies the attempt. Disappointed with herself (and more so with her trainer), Trudy finds a new trainer and attempts the feat again a year later.

This time she’s not only successful, but beats the men’s record by almost two hours. While impressive, it’s even more amazing to discover that rough waters, which made all observers on nearby ships seasick, violently pushed Trudy in the opposite direction fro many hours of her fourteen hour swim. Observers estimate that Trudy likely swam the equivalent of thirty-five miles in order to cross the Channel.

And like all true champions, her story doesn’t end with this one feat. Made nearly deaf by the cold waters of the Channel (or possibly by childhood measles), Trudy went on to teach deaf children to swim and later was a member of the President’s Council on Youth Fitness.

David A. Adler’s treatment is flawless; this book is an exemplary piece of biographical writing in picture book format, which would make this a perfect mentor text for students to study and emulate. Terry Widener’s lush, folk-art inspired illustrations are the perfect vehicle for this retelling.

Extensions:

• As a follow-up, students may want to check out Ederle's obituary (at ESPN Classics). She lived to the age of 98, spending her last years at a nursing home in Wyckoff, NJ. The obituary confirms many of the details shared in the book's narrative and author's note, while adding others. Students might use the obituary format to write similar summaries of other famous people they've studied.
• You may also wish to check out America's Best Girl, which is a released reading comprehension test from Massachusetts. America's Best Girl is what then-President Calvin Coolidge nicknamed Trudy in a telegraph congratulating her on swimming the channel. The test, downloadable in pdf format, is at the fourth grade level, and contains both multiple choice and an open-ended portion.
• Students often find it "cool" to discover that Trudy went on to help deaf children when she herself lost her hearing. You may wish to extend this to a study of famous people with disabilities, or difference. While the site provided at the link isn't pretty, it's a well categorized collection of people who have accomplished incredible things, despite, and perhaps because of, physical and mental challenges.

Terry Widener lends his talents to another stand-out title: Girl Wonder: A Baseball Story in Nine Innings. In the simplest prose (shared with the reader in “innings”), author Deborah Hopkinson relates a fictionalized tale of Alta Weiss, a pioneering baseball player who would win acclaim by playing for the all-male Independents. Although women’s teams had been around since the formation of the 1866 Vassar College team (a fact I learned in this book’s “Highlights of Women in Baseball" endnote), the foray of Alta Weiss into what was traditionally a men’s game was a first.

Again, I’d recommend this title, first and foremost, for its historical importance. But like America’s Champion Swimmer, it’s a terrific mentor text, demonstrating to students how an entire life story might be parsed to its essence. The author also uses figurative language (simile, hyperbole, metaphor) liberally, so it makes for a worthwhile reread as well.

Extensions:
Definitely check out my previous post on Women in Baseball. There you'll find lots of questions to use when reading the book, plus related titles, activities, and links.

While your boys may not consider ballerinas athletes, I would certainly argue the issue, especially after reading Tallchief: America's Prima Ballerina. The dedication and hard work needed to succeed as America’s first great dancer is made evident in this autobiography by Maria Tallchief (with author Rosemary Wells) and illustrator Gary Kelley. What we also discover, however, is what is at the soul of a dancer, In words as lyrical as dance itself, Maria says:

The secret of music is that it is something like a house with many rooms. My first simple exercises were like the frame of a house before it is built. The frame of good music has to be strong enough to hold the weight of a whole symphony, and delicate enough to break the heart.

The book’s luminescent images are reminiscent of the Degas dance paintings, but are at the same time solid, saturated, and iconic.

Extensions:

• Students are likely to ask what Maria Tallchief looked like in "real life." Definitely share some images with them. They may also wish to see her in action (this short video also includes Maria being honored with the National Medal of Arts Award in 1999).
• Maria was honored with the title "Woman of Two Worlds." Both before and after reading the book, ask students for their hypotheses about that name. To which two worlds does it refer? What other nickname might students choose for her? Who else can think of other famous people who have been honored with nicknames that tell the world more about them?
• Teachers can read more about Maria's childhood, and share some of the anecdotes with students, who are always curious to hear how the lives of "the great ones" mirror their own.

A fourth book I highly recommend is Women Daredevils: Thrills, Chills, and Frills, written by Julie Cummins and illustrated by Cheryl Harness. From the book’s inside flap:

From 1880 to 1929, these women, ranging in age from fifteen to sixty-three, demonstrated derring-do and nerves of steel equal to any male thrill seeker. In the water, in the air, and in the circus, their extraordinary exploits, as awesome today as then, put their names in lights and their “feats” in headlines. They drove, dove, sped, and fed the public’s appetite for spine-tingling, breath-holding entertainment in the days before television. Their spunk and courage made them inspiring at a time when women were testing the waters of equality and freedom.

In case you can’t tell, the fourteen performers profiled in this book are nothing less than amazing. Take, for example, Sonora Webster Carver, who plummeted forty feet, on horseback, into a tank of water just eleven feet deep on Atlantic City’s Steel Pier. For seven years she performed this feat until a terrible accident blinded her at the age of twenty-seven. Unknown to her fans below, Sonora continued to ride the high-diving horses blind for the next eleven years. (Her story was eventually made into the Disney movie Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken).

Extensions:

• Some of these daredevils and more are featured at 7 Most Mind-Blowing She-Daredevils in History. These women did stunts so incredibly insane that few men would even attempt them!
• At the National History Education Clearninghouse you can find a downloadable quiz of female daredevils (to the right at this site), plus additional links to expanded stories of their exploits (bottom of page).
• For writing autobiographies of every conceivable form and length, I'd recommend you visit ReadWriteThink and check out the following interactives: Acrostic Poems, Bio-Cube, Character Trading Cards, Flip Book, Postcard Creator, and Timeline. Those are just a few of the 56 cool tools that site provides for students. Need even more ideas? Check out my collection of interactive writing tools.

Crossroads of the Revolution

I've posted several times in the past on picture books about the American Revolution (Selene Castrovilla's By the Sword and Upon Secrecy, Anne Rockwell's They Called Her Molly Pitcher, and several versions of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere). And yet, I continue to get requests for more!

New Jersey teachers, especially, have a keen interest in this topic, and not just because it's required in the Core Content Curriculum standards. New Jersey is known as the Garden State, but ask any 4th grader in the state for a second claim to fame, and they'll tell you that New Jersey is also called The Crossroads of the Revolution. Situated between the strategic colonial cities of New York and Philadelphia, New Jersey witnessed over 100 battles during the War for Independence, as many battles as all other colonies combined.

Lynne Cheney's When Washington Crossed the Delaware: A Wintertime Story for Young Patriots tells how an event in Trenton, New Jersey would later be called a turning point in the War for Independence. Readers are provided just enough historical context to set the scene for Washington’s bold attack on Trenton. With his army depleted to just ten percent of its original strength and half his troops’ enlistments about to expire, General George Washington is desperate for a victory. The hope of the new nation rests upon an impossible winter attack on an intimidating foe who has already crushed the Americans in New York and chased them across New Jersey and the Delaware River itself. The rich text and saturated illustrations recount the battles of Trenton as well as Princeton, and accurately depict the resounding effect that these two victories had upon the morale of the Continental Army. Cheney's book is filled not only with beautiful illustrations, but also with numerous quotations from those who lived the events described within the book's covers.

A great extension for this book? Let students pretend that they're colonial soldiers under Washington's command and have them write letters "home" explaining why they're continuing to fight. (An interesting note: following the Battle of Trenton, the majority of enlistments in Washington's army were up. When the soldiers were promised additional pay, not one stepped forward. Washington then appealed to their loyalty to a noble cause, and then, and only then, because of their trust in and respect for their general, did the men step forward).

The Scarlet Stockings Spy, written by Trinka Hakes Noble and illustrated by Robert Papp, is perhaps one of the least known but most impressive picture books on the American Revolution. The story and vibrant paintings of this wonderful book will give students an excellent overall picture of life in the colonies during the rebellion. This story, as stated on the book's inner flap, is "a suspenseful tale of devotion, sacrifice, and patriotism" melded with "the stark realities of our country's birth."

The Scarlet Stockings Spy doesn't shrink from history telling. From the book's first page, we're offered plenty of context to set the scene:

In the fall of 1777, Philadelphia sat twitching like a nervous mouse. The British were going to attack, but no one knew where or when. Congress had fled inland to York. The Liberty Bell was secreted to Allentown. Folks thought the year resembled a hangman's gallows and took it as a bad sign. Now, all the church bells were being removed to keep the British from melting them down into firearms.

And what is best of all, this book succeeds in the area of excellent writing. In the next paragraph we hear:

Uncertainty settled over the city like soot. Suspicions sulked through the cobblestone streets like hungry alley cats. Rumors multiplied like horseflies. Spies were everywhere.

The text details, along with the meticulously researched paintings by Robert Papp, transport students to the colonial era through what Jane Yolen has termed "the time machine of historical fiction." While this book can be used for any number of extensions, it certainly fits well with the Revolutionary spy books I described in an earlier post, and students might be interested in some of the activities I recommended there.

John, Paul, George and Ben is Lane Smith's light-hearted and somewhat irreverent look at the childhoods of some of our founding fathers. We see John Hancock, Paul Revere, Ben Franklin, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson as somewhat mischievous young misfits, whose character traits foretell their future feats and fame. I love the fact that the author includes an epilogue titled "Taking Liberties," wherein he sets the record straight regarding some misconceptions (most from his book!) about these famous five.

A fun extension activity for John, Paul, George and Ben would have students write similar fictional childhoods of other famous Patriots. This would, of course, include a bit of research into those famous folks, but the clever assignment provides students with a genuine purpose for that research. Their stories should likewise include a "Taking Liberties" section to separate fact from fiction. A great picture book with which to start? Heroes of the Revolution by David A. Adler, which provides brief, one page biographies of some great patriots.

Abecedaries (aka ABC books) are an excellent way to give students an overall view of people, places, and ideas from the Revolutionary period. Yankee Doodle America: The Spirit of 1776 from A to Z, written and illustrated by Wendell Minor, features paintings inspired by historic inn and tavern signs. The American Revolution from A to Z, written by Laura Crawford and illustrated by Judith Hierstein, is a perfect introduction for lower grade students, although older elementary students will enjoy reading it on their own. Between the covers is a complete introduction to the ideas and people your students are likely to come across in their study of this time period. The Declaration of Independence from A to Z, written by Catherine Osornio with paintings by Layne Johnson, is an excellent look at the political intrigues behind the Revolution. While students (especially boys) will want to jump to the battles, the truth is that most of the Founding Fathers made their mark on history off the battlefield. This terrific book celebrates those who worked tirelessly to create one of the world's most important documents.

Independent Dames by Laurie Halse Anderson (author of Speak, my daughter's favorite book ever) brings us an eye-opening look at the surprising number of contributions by women to the Cause. Anderson's conversational tone begins this way:

Look, another school play about the heroes of the American Revolution. How sweet. We've got George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Paine. Famous guys who did important things. Wonderful. Just wonderful. Of course, you're missing part of the story. In fact, you're missing about half of it.

And from there, we're taken on a guided tour of the whole Revolution. While Anderson provides narration, Matt Faulkner's clever, cartoon-style illustrations provide the reader with an equal amount of humor. Text inserts tell about the famous lasses while a timeline at the bottom of the page provides a detailed, blow-by-blow account of the war. The awesome pictures and snarky writing style will make this book a big hit with all your students (yes, even the boys!).

Let It Begin Here: Lexington and Concord, written by Dennis Brindell Fradin and illustrated by Larry Day, chronicles the fateful hours of these first two battles. For students studying the Revolution, textbooks offer a pitiful two or three sentences about the events surrounding these first conflicts, and yet they were the percussive results of a fuse that had been burning for years in the city of Boston. In addition to the excellent narrative, Fradin provides short biographies of the "players" on both sides of the conflict, thereby answering the oft-asked question: "So what ever happened to these guys?" Day's illustrations are both iconic and detailed, and he provides numerous vantage points from which the reader can view the story. (Be sure to also check out another Dennis Brindell Fradin and Larry Day collaboration on Duel! Burr and Hamilton's Deadly War of Words, which describes the events which led to the fatal shooting of one of Washington's most beloved and loyal friends).

Other Recommended Titles

George Vs. George: The Revolutionary War as Seen by Both Sides by Rosalyn Schanzer, provides a look at the issues and conflict from both sides. A terrific, must-have reference for those students who just need to know more!
George Washington: A Picture Book Biography, written by James Cross Giblin and illustrated by Michael Dooling, provides a well rounded look at the man who wouldn't be king.

Valley Forge, written by Richard Ammon and illustrated by Bill Farnsworth, allows readers a more complete understanding of this crucial turning point than what is typically allotted in the single paragraph of most history books.

Samuel's Choice, written by Richard Berleth and illustrated by James Watling, provides a look at the Revolution from a slave's perspective.

Katie's Trunk, written by Ann Turner and illustrated by Ron Himler, provides a look at the Revolution from a Loyalist's perspective.

When Mr. Jefferson Came to Philadelphia, also by Ann Turner and illustrated by Mark Hess, is a very simple introduction to one of America's greatest Patriots.

Recommended Sites for Further Exploration

Frontier Forts is a site which provides beautiful photographs of colonial reenactors demonstrating life on America's frontier in the 1770s. Be sure to first read the teacher's page to see how this site might be incorporated into your classroom teaching.

Liberty! The American Revolution is a PBS site that includes the Road to Revolution, an interactive site which challenges older students on their knowledge of the Revolution. The site includes additional links and areas of interest to teachers.

Archiving Early America features short biographical videos on Revolution heroes. The link I've provided shows clips about Paul Revere and the Boston Massacre, and compares Paul Revere’s famous engraving with the facts of that event.

From the National Museum of American History comes You be the Historian. In this interactive learning module, students explore the lifestyle of a colonial family through artifacts.

Check out 18th century Colonial Williamsburg Trades; information about each trade and some related activities.

Mr. Nussbaum.com features interactive battle maps, Revolutionary timeline, causes and effects, people, the thirteen colonies, clip art, activities, videos, and flags.

Liberty’s Kids was an animated television show which ran on PBS for some time. The animated show featured fictional characters interacting with real-life people of early 1700s Boston. One feature I particularly like is the video section Now and Then, comparing life now to that of life in the 1700’s. Be sure to check out the Parents and Teachers section to get the most from this site. Want to use the video series? Most public libraries have all episodes on DVD.