Boston's Freedom Trail

School Library Journal

Gr 2-4-A nice selection of full-color photographs of historic Boston is the only redeeming feature of this otherwise poorly designed and sloppily written book. Two or three brief sentences cover most landmarks, and then it's on to the next with little or no transition, making for a very choppy presentation. Oversimplification leads to inaccuracy, e.g., ``Many settlers said they already paid too many taxes. These people called themselves patriots.'' There was a little more to it than that. And this is followed by the statement that ``it seemed the king stayed awake nights thinking of ways to take money from the colonists.'' The monument to the now famous 54th Massachusetts Regiment is described as an ``interracial monument to honor those who fought during the Civil War.'' A monument has no race, and while Dunnahoo notes that African Americans served in the regiment, it is not clear from the text that, except for the officers, all of the men were African American. Indeed, use of the term ``interracial'' would seem to imply a broader racial makeup than was the case. The statement that if captured, the black soldiers ``would become slaves again'' is also inaccurate. They would be killed. At the book's conclusion, the author refers to the ``shot Paul Revere heard on Lexington Common. It was called the shot heard around the world.'' While the shots fired at Lexington did precede those in Concord, it was the gunfire at Concord Bridge that Emerson referred to in his classic poem. Skip this disappointing muddle.-Elaine Fort Weischedel, Turner Free Library, Randolph, MA