Revolutionary Results

For some odd reason I was doing a search on “Johnny Tremain” last night, just to see what I’d find; one of the links led me to Amazon.com and a long list of reviews. I guess I expected some negative reviews of the novel from kids--probably a series book addict, I grumbled when I saw them, with their interchangeable characters and settings or someone who wasn’t a reader or who was forced to read the book.

To my surprise I came upon a teacher who read the book aloud to her class upon the suggestion of some curriculum guide and both she and her class hated it! It was hard to believe of a teacher--especially since that was how Johnny and I met so many years ago.

It was 1966. Our fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Grady, mentored student teachers, so in September, soon after school started after Labor Day, we were introduced to Miss Greenberg. She was so very young we couldn’t even think of her as “old” like our other teachers; she resembled classmates’ older sisters, wore her blond hair in a stylish “pixie cut,” and her wardrobe consisted of tasteful-length, flowery-print, bright miniskirts (!!!) and dresses instead of staid navy blue and black skirts and suit jackets.

Miss Greenberg had no sooner introduced herself than she insulted us! She told us she was going to read to us every day after lunch. Who did this woman think we were, babies? Some of us were readers, some of us weren’t, but all of us knew that at ten and eleven we were much too old to be read to. That was for little kids before they went to bed!

However, we dutifully filed back to our seats after lunch and Miss Greenberg began Johnny Tremain. I don’t recall how long she read each day--it might have even been as long as a half hour. After a couple of days, we began rushing back from lunch to hear more about cocky Johnny, patient Cilla, phlegmatic Rab, handsome Lieutenant Stranger, Johnny’s fabulous horse Goblin, that little brat Isannah, and the mysterious and beautiful Lavinia Lyte. We were appalled when Johnny lost the use of his hand; upset when he was arrested, cheered him on when he taught himself to ride. We would beg Miss Greenberg for more every time she closed the book.

By the second week of reading, the two copies of Johnny Tremain in the school library were constantly checked out. Everyone wanted to know how it “came out.” I begged my mother for a copy for Christmas. It was not in general paperback release back then, but somehow Mom managed to find a teacher’s instructional copy that had discussion topics and vocabulary words. Miss Greenberg had finished by Christmas, but I snapped up that copy like a starving person, so I could read it again and again.

The fifth grade never found another book we liked as well as Johnny Tremain. Miss Greenberg, noting how much we had enjoyed a Revolutionary War story, tried another called Hay Foot, Straw Foot. It was a dismal failure when we discovered it was nowhere near as complicated and full of complex, real characters as Johnny Tremain. She finally found a third book, totally unrelated to any war, that we enjoyed almost as much, title now forgotten.

But Johnny Tremain had been magic, something special. For a period each day a bunch of baby boomer kids who were “too big to be read to” were sent back in time and lived in Boston as the flame that became the United States began to burn.

As far as I'm concerned, it's still magic: when I open it I can smell the salt air at the wharves, hear the sea birds and the rattle and racket and rumble of horse-drawn carts, see the narrow cobblestone streets with people hurrying to their work. I would love to talk to Cilla, meet the townsfolk who banded together against the British, stick a tongue out at the unrepentant Dove, feed Goblin an apple--Johnny's world was that real to me. I'm glad I made his acquaintance.

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 3:24:00 PM

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