Customer Reviews

Katie's Trunk

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During the time of the Revolutionary War, Katie's family were loyalists and needed to hide when the Rebels come into their house to raid it. Katie hides in a trunk away from her family because she didn't want to leave the house. She is spotted by a Rebel who is their neighbor. Katie used to be best friends with his daughter, but now they are no longer allowed to see each other because their families disagree on England's rule over the Colonies. Katie is unsure what will happen now that she's been spotted. This book helps my seventh grade students (or any reader), clarify who are the Tories, Rebels, Loyalists, Yankees, Redcoats and Patriots. The book is based on a true story of one of the author's ancestors.

You know, it's not often that you find children's books about the Revolution from the perspective of Loyalists. It's all the Patriots were heroes and the Patriots were right and the Patriots were great.

Of course, in a war, nothing is ever that simple. Not really, and as adults we probably know that, although it's hard to shake the simple truths we memorized as children.

This book is based upon a true event that happened to the author's ancestor when she was a child. As revolutionary sentiments ran high in their village, she and her family became more and more outcasts, until one day a band of rebels came raiding, with her trapped in the house, hiding in a trunk.

It's not clear whether she was lucky and wasn't found, or whether she was saved by a sympathetic Revolutionary who had no desire to harm a small child, but this was a very close shave.

It's a different sort of story, probably because it tackles a hard truth we don't always like to hear: Even our national heroes, the "good guys", did bad things at times. (And even the bad guys (as they were to Katie and her family) can do nice things.)

My favorite parts in the story are when Kattie runs to her house to protect her families stuff from the rebels, when she decides to hide from the rebels in her mother's trunk, when the rebels decide to look into the trunk, & best of all when her neighbor comes to her rescue. I think this is a good book you would enjoy.