My Brother Sam is Dead

In the "Newbery Award Winner" and the "National Book Award" nominee by authors James Collier and Christopher Collier. This book tells the story of Tim Meeker, a 12 year old boy during the American Revolution. Tim's elder brother Sam, who Tim has always looked up to and longed to prove to that he was not just the younger brother. When Tim's father and Sam clash get in a argument over the revolution Sam runs away with the family's gun to join the Continental Army, Tim is caught up in the middle, father wants Tim to be a loyalist, or at least neutral like him. While Sam tries to gets Tim infatuated with the ideas of liberty and freedom. But even when a war is in his homeland the money still has to be made and that causes Tim to have to step up and make the transition from a child to a adult.

This novel gives you a 360, it doesn't say that the rebels were right or Great Britain, it simply depicts what happened, how it effected people, and all the options that could have been, it lets you decide for yourself if this war was necessary [I won't tell you my views that's not what this blog is for] and for me [at least] it makes you think much more then if it was like books like "Johnny Tremain" or "Dear America" which only tells one side of the story. I deeply enjoyed this novel because of the way Collier brothers depict the places, the people, and the emotions in the book. It will leave a lasting impression on you and what the war really was.

3.5/5

Johnny Tremain

In the book that has grown to become a historical fiction classic for children written in 1943 by Ester Forbes and was made into a movie in 1957 by Disney. The reason this book has grown to become what it is the way Forbes describes revolutionary Boston from the eyes of a teenage old boy; Johnny Tremain. The books begins with Johnny as a silversmith apprentice, one that is almost as good as his master, but as always with skill comes arrogance, and that leads to a problem that will cause Johnny to lose his trade.

But after the depression that followed comes a job, a paper boy for the Boston Observer which thrusts him into the Revolution, and gives him the opportunity to meet Patriots like Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and Joseph Warren among others. And draws to a thrilling climax.

This book is very good, it would have to be to win the Newbery Medal and rank #16 on most sold children books as of 2000, it has few faults and is one of the best historical fiction I've read.

4/5