In 2013, I created "Celebrate America", a reading  list intended to introduce young children to American history.  As we get set to celebrate Independence Day again, I decided to follow up with a list intended for older kids and young adults. I hope some of these titles will encourage readers to look beyond the fireworks and delve deeper into the story of how our country came to be.

First on the list would have to be Esther Forbes 1944 Newbery winner, Johnny Tremain. After a devastating hand injury ends Johnny's dream of becoming a silversmith, he takes a job as dispatch rider for The Committee on Public Safety and becomes involved with Boston revolutionaries like John Hancock and Samuel Adams. Johnny goes from being devastated about his future to playing an important role in the birth of a new nation.

In My Brother Sam Is Dead, by James and Lincoln Collier, a family is torn apart when one member of the Meeker family fights for Loyalists, and another fights fights for the Rebels. Young Tim Meeker is torn between wanting to be just like his brother, fighting with the colonists, and wanting to please his father, who is loyal to the crown. This book demonstrates not only the brutality of war, but also the toll the Civil War had on individual families. Other Collier brothers books that deal with this historical period are Jump Ship to Freedom and War Comes to Willy Freeman.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing is a National Book Award winner that defies exact classification. Young Octavian and his mother live in a large house with a group of male guardians known as the Novanglian College of Lucidity  that conduct experiments he neither understands nor questions. "It is ever the lot of children to accept their citcumstances as universal. and their perculiarities as general." But, eventually it is revealed that he and his mother are being held captive as part of an experiment to determine the mental acuity of Africans. As revolutionary unrest swells in the Boston streets outside as well as the compound, Octavian  learns the true horrors of slavery. Octavian's fate is left uncertain at the end of book one. His story continues in The Kingdom on The Waves.

In Chains, by  Laurie Halse Anderson a young girl, Isabel and her sister Ruth are sold as slaves to a wealthy New York City couple. Isabel meets Curzon, a slave with ties to the Patriots and convinces Ruth to spy on her owners, who are on the side of the Loyalists. Isabel is reluctant at first, but a horrific event convinces her she must pursue freedom at any cost. The story contines in Forge.

 1775 : A Good Year For Revolution is an ambitious work of nonfiction that argues that the year prior to the one we now celebrate is actually the one that is the watershed year in our history. Author Kevin Phillips focuses on the great battles of 1775 as well as on the increasingly aggressive and bellicose ultimatums that Congress presented to King George.  Another unconventional but important topic is Women Heroes of the American Revolution : 20 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Defiance and Rescue, which is a collection of biographical profiles of women who may not be well known, but who served as spies, nurses, writers, and more in service to our country.

Happy reading, and happy Fourth!