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About Johnny Tremain
Product Description This Newbery Medal-winning novel about the Revolutionary War is a classic of children's historical fiction. Fourteen-year-old Johnny Tremain, an apprentice silversmith with a bright future ahead of him, injures his hand in a tragic accident, forcing him to look for other work. In his new job as a horse-boy, riding for the patriotic newspaper The Boston Observer and as a messenger for the Sons of Liberty, he encounters John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Dr. Joseph Warren. Soon Johnny is involved in the pivotal events of the American Revolution, from the Boston Tea Party to the first shots fired at Lexington. Powerful illustrations by artist Michael McCurdy bring this classic to life. Review "This is Esther Forbes at her brilliant best. She has drawn the character of Johnny with such sympathy and insight that he may take his place with Jim Hawkins, Huck Finn and other young immortals." Book Week About the Author Esther Forbes (1891-1967) garnered a Newbery Medal and an enduring place in children's literature with the publication of Johnny Tremain. Her adult novel, Paul Revere and the World He Lived In, won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1943. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. I. Up and About On rocky islands gulls woke. Time to be about their business. Silently they floated in on the town, but when their icy eyes sighted the first dead fish, first bits of garbage about the ships and wharves, they began to scream and quarrel. The cocks in Boston back yards had long before cried the coming of day. Now the hens were also awake, scratching, clucking, laying eggs. Cats in malt houses, granaries, ship holds, mansions, and hovels caught a last mouse, settled down to wash their fur and sleep. Cats did not work by day. In stables horses shook their halters and whinnied. In barns cows lowed to be milked. Boston slowly opened its eyes, stretched, and woke. The sun struck in horizontally from the east, flashing upon weathervanes—brass cocks and arrows, here a glass-eyed Indian, there a copper grasshopper—and the bells in the steeples cling-clanged, telling the people it was time to be up and about. In hundreds of houses sleepy women woke sleepier children. Get up and to work. Ephraim, get to the pump, fetch Mother water. Ann, get to the barn, milk the cow and drive her to the Common. Start the fire, Silas. Put on a clean shirt, James. Dolly, if you aren’t up before I count ten . . . And so, in a crooked little house at the head of Hancock’s Wharf on crowded Fish Street, Mrs. Lapham stood at the foot of a ladder leading to the attic where her father-in-law’s apprentices slept. These boys were luckier than most apprentices. Their master was too feeble to climb ladders; the middle-aged mistress too stout. It was only her bellows that could penetrate to their quarters—not her heavy hands. ‘Boys?’ No answer. ‘Dove?’ ‘Coming, ma’am.’ Dove turned over for one more snooze. Frustrated, she shook the ladder she was too heavy to climb. She wished she could shake ‘them limbs of Satan.’ ‘Dusty Miller—let me hear your voice.’ ‘Here it is,’ piped Dusty pertly. Her voice changed to pleading. ‘Johnny—you get them two lazy lug-a-beds up. Get them down here. You pull that worthless Dove right out’er bed. You give Dusty a kick for me. I’m waiting for him to fetch fresh water so’s I can get on with breakfast.’ Johnny Tremain was on his feet. He did not bother to answer his mistress. He turned to the fat, pale, almost white-haired boy still wallowing in bed. ‘Hear that, Dove?’ ‘Oh—you . . . leave me lay, can’t you?’ Grumbling, he swung his legs out of the bed the three boys shared. Johnny was already in his leather breeches, pulling on his coarse shirt, tucking in the tails. He was a rather skinny boy, neither large nor small for fourteen. He had a thin, sleep-flushed face, light eyes, a wry mouth, and fair, lank hair. Although two years younger than the swinish Dove, inches shorter, pounds lighter, he kne
