Saturday, February 7, 2009

Johnny Tremain



Johnny Tremain

by Esther Forbes

Newbery Medal 1944

Coming-of-age during the American Revolution, a poor but selfish/arrogant boy finds himself and a greater purpose during the birth of our nation.

I heard a lot of negative comments about this one on LibraryThing, mostly within the "books kids are forced to read" threads, but I enjoyed it; as a 6th grader I* may have felt it was long and therefore boring. Who has time in a classroom to have kids read novels anyway? There is some awkward prose, choppy almost fragmented sentences, possibly due to when it was written (?)...

I think there are several movie versions, anyone recommend a particular one?

connections: Paul Revere, colonial/revolutionary America, My Brother Sam is Dead , the Dear America series

*"I" as in a broad, generalized assumption of 6th graders-- I personally probably would have loved it, and I'm surprised I'd missed it way back then...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

it was a great book. My piers and I finished reading it and we are in 8th grade. It was in between our history class and our english class assignment.

Mr. Nauton said...

Glad you enjoyed it, it fits in perfectly with both English and History. What's next on your reading list?