Recommending a Tea Party Picture Book

In the latest issue of The Horn Book magazine, I review Russell Freedman and Peter Malone’s new picture book, The Boston Tea Party.

Freedman is a Newbery Medal-winning writer of nonfiction for kids, and this book is his usual well-researched and clearly written discussion of a historic event.

The most vivid, detailed descriptions of the Tea Party are the recollections of men who started talking about the once-secret event in the 1820s and ’30s. Most of those participants were, naturally, quite young back in 1773. As a result, their recollections highlight the teen-aged perspective on the event—just right for young readers. The global dimension of the tea crisis isn’t apparent here; for that, Marc Aronson’s The Real Revolution for high-schoolers and adults is very good.

A picture book has a limited number of illustrations, and two in this book are from the point of view of Royal Navy sailors on a ship in the harbor. I found that a bit disproportionate since the navy played little role in the Tea Party, and I wondered if that perspective was due to Peter Malone being a British artist.