Johnny Tremain

  
 Eight patriotic men died at Lexington Green in the first volley of bullets; and so began the war for Independence, the American Revolution.

  Reading a work of historical fiction is a great way to get a inside look at historical events. We're learning about the American Revolution and we needed a good book that could give us the colonists' view and Johnny Tremain did just that. Johnny was a colonial silversmith's apprentice and was the best. Johnny had only one problem. He was so prideful in his work that one day he didn't see a puddle of melted wax on the floor, slipped in it and put his hand in molten silver, crippling it. He could no longer be a silversmith.

  Sometimes you need to fight for your beliefs, even if you have to die for them.

   Johnny had to find a new job. He finally settled on carrying papers for the Boston Observer, a local newspaper run secretly by the Sons of Liberty. He made a friend there named Rab. Rab wanted to fight and break away from England. One day Johnny heard the Sons of Liberty talk about having the Boston Tea Party and Johnny was to be part of it.

  "Mother England" taxes our tea, how dare she! We won't buy that tea, but we will board those tea ships and have a tea party in the harbor in which they sit!

Tea. The tea we have as part of our daily drink is gone to the sea for "Mother England" to see.

  During one of the Sons of Liberty meetings, they gave the following instructions.  If Sam Adams declared  "This meeting can do nothing for our country," Johnny would blow on a whistle to signal the start of the tea party. This is exactly what happened. Once Johnny got the signal, he blew on his whistle and patriots in Indian disguises started running onto the tea ships.  CHOP! CRACK! BOOM! SPLASH! That was the sound that came off those ships:  the sound of chests splitting and tea spilling into the harbor. When the work was done, the "Indians" ran back into the city and changed back into their original clothes. The "Indians,"  the British soon found out, were colonists and they had to pay for the tea.

  CRACK! The sound of a British gun firing, sounding the start of the American Revolution.

  The British started moving their troops into the colonies. While the British did that, the colonies formed militias of minutemen to fight back. At Lexington the British started fighting the minutemen and when the skirmish ended, eight minutemen were dead. Johnny knew Rab was at Lexington when the battle happened, so Johnny went looking for him. Johnny learned that Rab was mortally wounded. Rab later died from his wounds. Because of Rab's death, Johnny knows he has to fight for the freedom Rab wanted.  First he needs to have his crippled hand fix, which his friend Dr. Warren offers to do for him.  Johnny takes him up on it and begins to take up the cause. 

  I read this book because you can read all the facts about the American Revolution, but you won't find the important things that everyday people experienced.  Historical fiction gives you a fuller understanding because you get a different view that plain facts can't.  It puts you in the main character's shoes and allows you to see why people did things that they did.