The Boston Tea Party (First Book)

Traces the events leading up to the Boston Tea Party, and examines the Party's impact on the Revolution.

Grade 4-6-An attractive volume with large print and wide margins. Its good-quality full-color reproductions of period artwork are occasionally too small to provide meaningful detail, but are appropriately placed. The book opens with a description of events that led up to the Boston Tea Party, with succeeding chapters explaining what happened and its historical significance. There are moments of stylistic awkwardness, but Oleksy does give a sense of excitement to some of the text. Similar in coverage and written for the same audience as Conrad Stein's The Story of the Boston Tea Party (Childrens, 1984), this book gives more information in a slightly more sophisticated style. Purchase where additional single volumes are desirable on this subject.
Rosie Peasley, Empire Union School District, Modesto, CA
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 3-6. Beginning with the dumping of tea into Boston Harbor, this First Book then backs up to retrace the conditions, opinions, personalities, and events that led to that historic incident. Oleksy captures the distrust and the disputes between the colonies and the mother country that gradually united the colonies in the years preceding the American Revolution. While the book includes the reactions of several colonies to British policies in North America, a chapter on the Boston Massacre sets the stage for the Tea Party itself. Illustrated with period engravings and paintings in color and in black and white, the book features attractive chapter headings as well. A readable account of a significant episode in American history, this book will prove useful in school and public libraries. Carolyn Phelan