Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
Everybody’s Revolution: A new look at the people who won America’s freedom
Nonfiction
For ages 8 to 12
Scholastic, 2006 ISBN: 978-0439634045
Often when we think about the America Revolution we picture a group of solid white Anglo Saxon men of English ancestry coming together to fight for a set of beliefs that were important to them. In actual fact, just like today, America in the 1770's was very much a mix of peoples from many countries and backgrounds. Forty per cent of the colonists were not of English stock. Therefore, when the time came for Americans to fight against their British "masters," there were German Americans, Dutch Americans, Jewish Americans, French Americans, Irish American, Scottish Americans, African Americans, and many others who joined the struggle. Many of these people had faced oppression in their former homelands and were therefore very determined to make sure that their lives in their new home would not be spent under the yoke of some foreign power.
In this very valuable book readers will get to meet some of the non-English Americans who fought for their new country. There were those eight men of non-English stock who dared to sign the Declaration of Independence. There was that famous man Paul Revere whose father was a native born Frenchman who fled from France to escape religious persecution. There were the many African Americans, nine of whom fought with the minutemen at Lexington and Concorde. One of the nine died on that famous day when the war officially began.
The author also makes sure to include the many women and children who fought for their country. Though women were not expected to actively participate in the war, many of them did. Some were spies for the American cause and a few even took up arms and fought on the battlefield.
It is truly astonishing to learn that the revolution was fought by such a diverse group of people. They were united in their belief that what they were fighting for was just and whatever differences they might have had did not matter at that time. They shared common goals, courage, and determination and that was more than enough to carry them through the conflict.
