Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Just in Time, Abraham Lincoln

Cover art for JUST IN TIME, ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Author & Illustrator:   Patricia Polacco
Publisher:  G.P. Putnam's Sons
Publication Year:   2011
Location: Knox County Public Library- Halls

Awards:   School Library Journal starred review

Summary:  Patricia Polacco combines time travel with a fictionalized accounting of Antietam, the bloodiest one day battle of the Civil War (23,000 dead & wounded). A grandmother takes her two world-weary grandsons on a "no electronics" trip to Harper's Ferry, West Virginia to a Civil War exhibit. The two boys try on some Union uniforms and then head off through a giant wooden door. On the other side, they find themselves in the middle of Antietam right after the battle in 1862. They accompany the photographer Matthew Brady and Abraham Lincoln as they visit the encampment and battlefield where thousands of soldiers fought. They tell Lincoln to stay strong, that one day a black man will become president, and they show him a 2007 penny. They run back to their own time and their grandmother who assures them that it was an reenactment....or was it?

Classroom Ideas: An addition to a class study of the Civil War.

Extras: Author's note explaining the realities of Antietam and the areas in which Polacco fictionalized the battle, Bibliography

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