Customer Reviews

The Boston Coffee Party (I Can Read Book 3)

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This books tells a story based on an account from Abigail Adams in a letter to her husband John Adams during the revolutionary period. It is in simple English and an emerging reader could read this.

A greedy store owner in Boston holds back his stores of goods until there are shortages and then raises his prices higher than other merchants' prices. The women in the community are busy sewing shirts for the men who are away fighting as soldiers in the American revolution. The community feeling is that the greedy merchant is being unpatriotic and not pulling with the community, but rather using the tides of war to enrich himself. So the women take action and force him to open his stores of coffee to them, to which they help themselves without payment at all.

I like the book for telling a story that is historical, shows some of the difficulties of war, and portrays women as doers and solvers. I'm somewhat troubled by the actions of the women, which in everyday life would be considered criminal.

This book is recommended as a core curriculum book. It could provide a very good basis for discussion; but I wouldn't want my child reading it without having some thinking talk afterwards.

This is a great book for elementary school students. Unlike many history books aimed at the K-5 crowd, The Boston Coffee Party tells an exciting story based on real events in language that most 7-10-year-olds can read for themselves.

I used this book (and others in the series -- Sam the Minuteman, George the Drummer) with my 2nd grade class and it was a big hit. I've also presented it to 5th graders along with the primary sources.

Other reviewers have mentioned reservations about the content, but if this book is presented within a larger discussion of the American Revolution, it's fine. The offending merchant is carted through the streets and intimidated, but he isn't tarred and feathered or beaten. I'm not really sure there's an honest way to talk about the American Revolution that doesn't include at least a little bit of potentially upsetting content (battles, treason, mob actions, destruction of property, slavery).

If you are the parent of a budding historian or a teacher with curriculum standards that demand that elementary students know what "No taxation without representation" means, this is a great buy.