Customer Reviews

We Were There, Too!: Young People in U.S. History

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Do you know who Deborah Sampson, Eunice Williams or Joseph Miliauskas are? How about John Tinker, Johnny Clem and Claudette Colvin? These six names are among the more than seventy young people profiled in Phillip Hoose's marvelously unique history book, We Were There, Too!. From the boys who sailed to America with Columbus and all through the history of this country, young people have contributed to every important event that helped shape our nation. Each of Mr Hoose's painstakingly researched and beautifully written stories is both compelling and engaging and includes photographs and/or other artwork and additional related historical information about the world at that time. Youngsters will be fascinated and inspired and history will come alive, as they read about young people their own age who stood up and made a difference. Perfect for kids 10 and older, We Were There, Too! chronicles a part of history, often overlooked and is a book that should be savored and enjoyed by everyone, young and old alike.

If you've got a student who is bored by history as we know it "We Were There, Too!" will go a long way to getting that student re-engaged again!

Across the parade of time, from Diego Bermudez sailing off into the unknown with Christopher Columbus(did you realize that most of the crews of those three ships were in fact boys?) to the well-known peacemaker Pocahontas in 1607 to unknown Oloudah Equiano from Benin, Africa of 1756. Pictures from books of those years & sidebars which illustrate the way people lived & thought as well as a paragraph about What Happened to... bring our story to life.

From Strangers in Paradise: The British Colonies where young boys ran away to sea to see the New World to those captured by the First People & taken away to live with them to those in Africa sold into slavery.

From Breaking Away: The American Revolution when boys & girls, each with their own skills helped sound the alarm, translated the melting pot of languages, listened to the enemy & joined up in the Continental Army.

From Learning to Be a Nation when youngsters confused the enemy, sewed flags & uniforms, discovered alphabets & fled other parts of the world to come join in the making of this new nation.

From One Nation or Two? When thousands of young men & a few young women joined up to fight the Civil War which tore this nation apart. Girls who became doctors & sculptors, boys who went whaling, were POWs & pilots in the Underground Railroad.

From Elbow Room when hundreds of thousands of parents headed West & their sons & daughters went along for the ride(more often they walked!) & took along cows, journals, horses & the children of the First People who survived the encounter with this flood of strangers who would change their lives forwever.

In Shifting Gears in a New Century the children of our history worked terribly hard - in sweatshops & mines, led strikes for better, safer conditions & worked on ocean liners, put their lives on the line for politics & began to work in front of the cameras in that newfangled Hollywood industry.

In Hard Times: War, Depression, and Dust - from one World War to the next, children fully participated beside their elders - whether braving mob actions, riding the rails to food & a future or fighting for world freedom in faraway places or playing national baseball for the first time at home.

When the Times That Kept a-Changin' came around children braved hate-filled crowds on their way to school; were migrant workers who organized unions; got bedazzled by computers in their infancy(the computers, not the kids!) & fought for a girls' basketball league, the right to go to school & to save the environment.

All in all - "We Were There, Too!" is an important book to help young people feel how we used to live & think about life & how some young people, in today's world, are still making history.

My Middle School Special Day Class students were captivated and intrigued by each story we read together. Used as an introduction to specific eras in our history, these eyewitness stories provoked the students to ask questions, seek further information, and dive into their history lessons. There is such a long waiting list to borrow this book that I can only allow students to take it home overnight. This was the best twenty dollars I have ever spent on a classroom resource!

When someone gave me this book as a sort of gift, I was kind of reluctant to read it. I mean, it looked like another one of those thick, boring biography collections that line the bookshelves in your social studies classroom. Was I ever wrong...I started reading this book, thinking I'd just read for a few minutes, and soon half an hour had gone by. Phillip Hoose has done a wonderful job of creating a book with dynamic young people throughout history that inspire us all. And he goes beyond telling about Phillis Wheatley...he tells about Anna Meyer, who played professional baseball during World War 2, John Tinker who boldly stood up for his rights to protest the Vietnam War, and the boys who played a crucial-yet-rarely-realized role as part of the crew on Columbus's voyage. So you think history's boring? Read this book and see it in a whole new light!

What an exciting way to put a new spin on American History. A great teaching aide. It whets the appetite to learn more about each segment of History covered. Interesting reading for all ages.

I'm an eighth grade U.S. history teacher. I have used this book in my classroom, and the kids love it. It brings important events in history alive for the students. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning about individual stories in history.

I think Phillip Hoose's idea of portraying history through the eyes of children is great. However, his research could be alot better.
I got his book because a relative of mine, Ellwood Harvey MD, was actually involved in one of the stories that Mr. Hoose wrote about in the book, Maria Weems:Escape to Canada. It was Ellwood, not Dr. Howard, that took Ms. Weems from the White House to Philadelphia (and then onto NYC). While I can forgive this mistake, many sources have gotten it wrong, there are too many mistakes in this chapter that could have easily been checked. Hoose should have used William Still's famous book on the Underground Railroad (1873), it is in most libraries and currently in print.
First, the girl's name was Ann Maria Weems, not Maria Weems. She was rescued by Jacob Bigelow, not Charles Bigelow. Mr. Bigelow hid Ann in Washington DC in Sept. of 1855, not Oct., until Ellwood Harvey could come get her. Jacob was not a lawyer or a Quaker. He was often mentioned in Still's book as he was a major conductor on the UGRR and worked for the Washington Gas Light Company which used coal to produce their gas. Once the coal was unloaded Bigelow would hid escaping slaves on the boats leaving Washington DC.
Bigelow's interest in Ann originated with Harriet Beecher Stowe's request that he get involved in freeing the Weems. The family was well known amongst abolitionists, in England money was even raised to buy their freedom. Charles Price had bought the whole Weems family, except for the father who was a freeman, not just Ann. He then sold off Ann's three brothers. Bigelow bought Ann's mom and older sister to set them free, but Price would not sell Ann. That's when plans were made to rescue her.
The Powder Boy was the one of the captains of these boats. He had been responsible for getting the gunpowder onboard while in the navy. The nickname stuck. When the Powder Boy backed out of the plan to free Ann the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee offered then Ellwood $300 to fetch her. He was working as a professor at the Female Medical College in Philadelphia (the first school for female MDs). He used the $300 to buy the college's first dissection mannequin. While Ellwood had written a famous letter about witnessing a slave auction there is no proof that he was involved in the UGRR beyond the episode with Ann. Ann also used a second alias based on Ellwood's editor, E. W. Capron. This was used after "Joe Wright", Ann's first alias, had reached the free states.
Ellwood took Ann to not just Still's house, but also NYC. Amos Noe Freeman was the black reverend that took her the rest of the way to Canada.
Outside of the bits about Ellwood the rest of these facts are available to the public. With this many obvious errors one can only wonder how accurate the other chapters are in this book.
A wonderful idea like this book needs a little more time spent researching to provide the necessary factual accuracy.

History can sometimes be a challenge for kids - hearing about people they don't and will never know, who lived in times that seem so unreal to them. No wonder they can't relate!

This book gives them real world examples of how kids are a part of history, too. It's a great perspective to jump start a kids interest in reading about History.

Recommended for 12 and older due to reading level.

My copy has been read so often that the spine had to be taped. For years, every time I needed history to write about, I went to this book. 7th grade project to research a lesser-known Latino historical figure? Jessica Govea. 8th grade historical figure painting project? Harriet Hanson. A paper about the civil war with an original topic? Five pages on Dick King and Billy Bates. Wonderfully engaging.

This book takes you on a fabulous journey through U.S. history through the experiences of real children. I loved it! I couldn't put it down. I found myself saying, "I'll just read one more story..." and then I would say it again and again and before I knew it, an hour would pass. I like that the stories are told in chronological order (for the most part. Lewis and Clark come after the civil war, not sure why.) I read another history book through the eyes of children and it jumps all over the place. This book sticks to an era, I like that. I highly recommend this book, it's a keeper!