The Secret of Sarah Revere

Rating:
Summary: History as teen soap opera
Review: Why do we think that girls won't learn history unless it is spoon-fed to them in People Magazine form? This book proceeds on the outlandish assumption that the 13-year-old daughter of Paul Revere had a crush on leader of the Revolution Joseph Warren, 20 years her senior, and was angry at him because she thought he had a crush on her step-mother, Paul Revere's wife. While there's no historical basis for any of this, most of the book is taken up with the daughter's inability to tell Warren that she's sorry for treating him badly, with a few actual facts thrown in. While Paul Revere's story is one of the most exciting of the Revolution -- and in fact there's an argument there would have been no Revolution without him -- you won't learn much about it from this book unless you already know the facts and can pick up on some elliptical references. What's worse, you come out of it having no idea whether any particular "fact" you just read has any historical basis. A much better choice is "In Their Own Words: Paul Revere," by George Sullivan, real history, and easy to read.