Book Review Club: Johnny Tremain, A Children’s Classic #review #kidlit

Recently, I re-read Esther Forbes’s children’s classic novel, Johnny Tremain, which won the Newbery Award in 1944. This was a favorite book of my childhood and seems an appropriate choice for the week of our Memorial Day holiday. Though Memorial Day was originally created to honor the dead of the Civil War, we now honor all those who gave their lives for this country, starting with the Minutemen killed at Lexington.

Johnny Tremain cover

To recap, Johnny Tremain is an apprentice silversmith in old Boston town at the beginning of the book. A complex character, he is more than a bit arrogant and full of himself at first since he’s the senior apprentice and quite talented at his trade. That is, until the awful accident that ruins his right hand. Suddenly, Johnny is plunged from his position as first among equals to least among equals. His first response is to take out his misery on everyone else. Eventually, he finds another job delivering newspapers for a radical Boston newspaper, which puts him in the midst of the revolutionary fervor. He also meets Raf, an older boy who helps Johnny and becomes a close friend.

Adversity makes Johnny into a better person and propels him into the forefront of the revolution, including the Boston Tea Party. I found some of the passages fascinating in the context of knowing the book was written in 1943.

Forbes started out as a historian, and had previously published an acclaimed non-fiction work, Paul Revere and the World He Lived In. As a result, her novel has a marvelous sense of place and time. Boston is one of my favorite US cities. I was there twice last year where I spent a day walking the Freedom Trail from Boston Common to the Old North Church.

Paul Revere Statue and Old North Church Spire

Paul Revere Statue and Old North Church Spire

This was a nice nostalgic read for me that made me want to see the Disney movie again, which is available to rent on Prime Video. I enjoyed the book just as much as an adult as I did as a child. The Kindle version contains original illustrations which I also enjoyed. This is one of the books, along with Elizabeth Speare’s The Witch of Blackbird Pond, which inspired me to want to write historical novels.

What are some of your childhood favorites?

Linda

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Book Review Club: While Justice Sleeps by Stacey Abrams #thriller #review

Since the Supreme Court is much in the news these days, I thought this thriller an appropriate pick for this month’s edition of the Barrie Summy Book Review Club.

While Justice Sleeps

While Justice Sleeps
by Stacey Abrams*
Doubleday, 2021

“a gripping thriller set within the halls of the U.S. Supreme Court—where a young law clerk finds herself embroiled in a shocking mystery plotted by one of the most preeminent judges in America.”

Avery Keene is a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Howard Wynn. She’s young and struggling to deal with her job, her student debt and her drug-addled mother. As if she doesn’t have enough on her plate, she’s thrown a curve ball when her boss, who is ill with an incurable degenerative disease, suddenly goes into a coma. To Avery’s surprise, he has left her his Power of Attorney as well as cryptic clues to a pending case about a merger between an American biotech company and an Indian genetics firm, a merger opposed by the president.

Everyone is hiding something. The biotech company has engaged in some unethical practices, the president and his chief henchman have checkered pasts, and the justice has his secrets as well. It takes Avery, the justice’s son, and a few other accomplices to sort things out.

The plot is too convoluted to try to explain here, but the book was very exciting, with lots of twists and turns. I had a hard time putting it down. Excellent legal thriller with a strong female protagonist.

* Yes, that is the Stacey Abrams who is currently running for governor of the State of Georgia! She’s a brilliant, multi-talented woman. She also writes multi-cultural romance under the name Selina Montgomery.

I hope you are enjoying spring weather, wherever you are. Happy Reading!

Linda

As always, click on the link below for more great reviews in Barrie Summy’s Book Review Club!

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book review blogs
@Barrie Summy