We Were There, Too!
 Phillip Hoose
 (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
 2001 Farrar, Straus & Giroux
  ISBN: 0374382522


Young People in U.S. History. The role of children in the making of the United States of America & their contributions, based on primary sources, first person accounts, journals & interviews. More than 70 stories about young people from diverse cultures.

This book was a difficult one to categorize -- should I put it in History, or Children's? If I put it into History it will sink into the past where only adults think to explore & that's the reason I've categorized it as a Children's book -- because it is about the children of our history written for the children in our present.

Phillip Hoose calls them Young People because for most of our history someone who had reached the ripe old age of 12 or 13 were rarely considered the way we do our children today. In the past most people, who had survived the host of illnesses that felled many, many children, were already learning the trades of their fathers & following in their mothers' footsteps. Children yearned to earn their keep & were expected to at the earliest opportunity. Things changed in the 1800s when schooling for everyone was thought a good idea, although for decades after, especially boys, quit the luxury of learning for the necessity of earning.

In this man's world, the way they tell it, history is made only by men, with the occasional notation about a woman making her mark. We Were There, Too! is a good way to take note of the many children who were right there, discovering & exploring, fighting & riding, sewing & writing, working the land & populating the towns from before our nation was even thought of -- clear up to the activists & heroic youngsters of the 1990s. For every young person's life recorded in this book, imagine there are many, many more who lived & worked & grew up to be adults without leaving any record for “history” to make a note.

We Were There, Too! is made up of Nine Parts with a chapter about Linking Up in the Twenty-first Century at the end.

In Part One. When Two Worlds Met -- Phillip Hoose takes us back to 1492 when 12 year old Diego Bermúdez sailed into the unknown with Christopher Columbus (did you know that most of the crews of those three ships were in fact boys?) & the other side of that adventure when the Tainos first met the Spanish sailors.

Part Two. Strangers in Paradise: re-introduces us to the well-known peacemaker Pocahontas over 100 years later as well as Tom Savage who wanted to see the New World & ran away from his home in England to obtain passage across the Atlantic by becoming an indentured servant. There was quite a trade in sending children across the ocean -- girls were acquired as brides in a variety of nefarious deals & boys were often conned into the seven years of servitude before being allowed their freedom. If you've ever wondered how tobacco figured into our economy, Feeding England's Newest Habit is a short & interesting story! My history mistress used to joke about the two things brought back from the colonies: potatoes & tobacco & what would have happened had we smoked the spud & boiled the leaves! Pretty lame, huh!

Part Three. Breaking Away: tells the stories of a dozen youngsters who set their skills to work for The American Revolution -- spinning yarn for liberty; apprentice printers; joining up in the Continental Army; riding to carry the news; spying against the enemy & changing clothes to fight.

Part Four. Learning to Be A Nation sees more children thwarting enemy incursions; sewing flags & uniforms; learning to work in the thunderous texture mills; going whaling for the prized lamp oil; speaking out in politics & piloting those traveling the Underground Railroad.

Part Five. One Nation or Two? tore us apart for a few years when children were swallowed up by The Civil War. Girls became doctors & survivors of the burning of Atlanta & barefooted boys were killed by the thousands or became POWs.

Part Six. Elbow Room had hordes of parents heading West -- from Sacagawea's trek to the Pacific Ocean with Lewis & Clark to Enrique Esparza's survival at the Alamo; from Mary Goble's walk to Zion to William Cody's Pony Express rides; from Ng Poon Chew's journey from China to California to Chuka's final stand in Arizona as the whites surrounded him.

Part Seven. Shifting Gears in a New Century -- by 1880 nearly 20% of all workers were 15 or younger -- cities were crowded & life was brutal & families needed the income, so children worked long, long hours in dirty conditions among relentless & dangerous machinery. Millworkers, stitchers, miners & newsboys -- as many kids as adults populated the Industrial Age, from the South to the North -- & left their mark in politics, working conditions & that newfangled Hollywood industry!

Part Eight. Hard Times of Wars, Depression & the Dust Bowl decades. Boys knitted blankets for their brethren in the trenches of World War I & girls marching for political freedom survived mob reactions; boys & girls rode the rails for food & a future while others lied about their age & went to war in faraway places while still others were rounded up & sent to a bleak childhood in camps that froze in winter & baked in summer. A lucky few got to play professional baseball.

Part Nine. Times That Kept a-Changin' saw girls who braved hate-filled mobs to go to school; saw boys fighting in another country for the freedom of others while at home they could not vote; the Civil Rights Movement was filled with young people willing to brave water cannons, police dogs & jail for their freedom; saw migrant farmers, many of whom where children, face down the Supreme Court; saw the exploration of computers by youngsters who would eventually start another revolution!

AIDS came into young people's lives & again hysterical mobs were seen around schools & environmental concerns got our youngsters in action.

That's just a quick overview -- there are many, many more young people featured -- their struggles for freedom, their journeys to safety & their bravery. Phillip Hoose ends each biography with a paragraph of What Happened to...

In these politically correct times, we've decided to keep kids as child-ish for as long as possibe. Our school year is still governed by how our great-great-grandparents lived when they were mostly farmers who needed their children during the growing & harvesting seasons -- as if one kind of lifestyle fits us all. In the cases of Claudette Colvin, Elizabeth Eckford, Carolyn McKinstry, John Tinker, Jessica Govea, Bill Gates, Arn Chorn, Judi Warren, Ryan White & Kory Johnson -- they made history by staying in school!

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

Phillip Hoose is an award-winning author of books, essays, stories, songs & articles. His It's Our World, Too!: Stories of Young People Who Are Making a Difference was an ALA Notable Book, a Lupine Award Honor Book, & winner of the Christopher Award. He also co-authored Hey, Little Ant with his daughter, Hannah, which was an Honor Book for the Jane Addams Children's Book Award. He has been a staff member of The Nature Conservancy & is a founding member of the Children's Music Network. He lives in Portland, Maine.

Do check out my Interview with Phillip Hoose.

The author's website is: www.weweretheretoo.com/
(01/06/02)

Rebecca