Customer Reviews

Joining the Boston Tea Party (Time-Traveling Twins)

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My kids (ages 6 and 7) both enjoyed me reading this book aloud. They learned alot by the end of the book about not only the Boston Tea Party but also what life was like for the colonists during the Revolutionary War period. Nice color pictures held my kids attention well.

In this book, the Time-Traveling twins journey back to Boston in 1773 to get a firsthand look at colonial life and experience the Boston Tea Party. This book is chalked full of historical facts and keeps kids interested. They really did cover life in colonial America in 1773 as well as they did the actual tea party. The author tried to weave in humor in the form of their talking pet dog, but it really just made it confusing and didn't seem to add to the story at all.

While it's easy to explain away the magic hat by saying that the author was just pretending, there were several other things that prevent me from recommending this book. #1 being that the boy calls his sister a `dummy' for asking a helpful question, and then putting her down further with his next comment. I found the mixture of block texts and speech balloons hard to follow. I wasn't sure where I was supposed to be reading at next, and reading them in the wrong order made absolutely no since. The twins also went with their ancestor without telling their grandmother (who was in charge) where they were going. In fact, they even mentioned not telling her, because she probably wouldn't want them to go. In the same conversation they mentioned the danger of what they were doing and that the penalty if they were caught was death. This upset my boys a great deal that someone would kill a child. We had to stop and re-explain that there weren't really kids involved and that this was just a pretend story about an actual event.

Overall, I think my favorite part of this book was the Author's note. It held tons of facts without the hard to read speech balloons or character flaws and fictional fluff getting in the way. If you are studying the revolutionary war and its surrounding events, there are tons of quality books out there; I highly recommend skipping this one.

This book takes time travel and costume dress-up to the Boston Tea Party. It is cute and harmless, and it's memorable for kids. There is a GREAT map on the front end papers, and a fun comparison of colonial gear with present-day gear on the back end papers.