Historical Fiction

The Red Badge of Courage By Stephen Crane

Publisher: Dover Publications Inc. (1990)

ISBN: 0486264653

We meet a young farm boy named Henry Fleming.  His mother threw every excuse in the book for him to not join the infantry, but he did it for the glory anyways. Once on the battle field, he realizes that war isn't what he thought it was.  He and then other cavalrymen painfully wait day after day to hear any advancement in their plans, while gossiping about what they heard.

Rating:

I give The Red Badge of Courage a LITTLE SMILE.  This rating is more subjective for me because I found this story hard to read.  There definitely is an expectation of knowing military background knowledge and 1800s vernacular.  I do think this would be a great historical perspective read to those who enjoy war-based books, but it was a little much for me.

Train to Somewhere By Eve Bunting & Ronald Himler

Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers (2000)

ISBN: 978-0618040315

We follow a little girl named Marianne and her journey on the orphan train.  She is deemed undesirable of all the orphans, and stop by stop she watches the other orphans get adopted.  She copes with the thought that at the next station, she will be reunited with her mother.  

Rating:

Train to Somewhere gets a BIG SMILE even though it is a sad story.  This perspective taught me about the orphan trains, something that I did not know about.  Though I am relieved at the end when Marianne is adopted to a loving family and is not left alone as an orphan.

NightJohn By Gary Paulsen

Publisher: Delacorte Press (1993)

ISBN: 0385308388

A plantation owner named Waller buys a new slave named John.  One fateful night, he goes looking for some tobacco and all he has to trade is learning how to read.  A 12 year old girl named Sarny is intrigued and takes him up on this offer.

Rating:

NightJohn deserves a BIG SMILE.  Honestly, I would give it a mega smile if my scale could reach.  I could not put this book down.  It's a first person account from a fictional girl named Sarny.  It is an emotional journey from Sarney being excited about learning the alphabet to Waller punishing John and Mammy for hiding this from him.  Waller said that is was illegal for the slaves to learn how to read and write.  **Spoilers**  So Waller chops off each of John's middle toes as punishment.  Two days later, John actually escapes and says he will be back.  Waller becomes enraged that his dogs cannot find his slave for the first time.  Then John comes back late in the night and brings Sarny to his school to teach her the rest of the alphabet.  I loved this book because John was dedicated to teaching slaves how to read and write in order to tell their accounts of the atrocities that they face.  In this book we encounter raping for breeding, escapes, brutal deaths, and hope.  It displays the perspective of slave life and how awful it is to treat humans in this way.  The inside cover depicts how Gary Paulsen meticulously researched his facts in order to write this story, and the quality truly shows.