Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Paul Revere's Ride


















Paul Revere's Ride
  • year of publication:  1990
  • city of publication:  New York
  • publisher:  Dutton Children's Books
  • ISBN:  0-525-44610-9
Annotation:  The famous narrative poem recreating Paul Rever's midnight ride in 1775 to warn the people of the Boston coutnryside that the British were coming.
 
Personal Thoughts:   This was the second picturebook on the famous ride of Paul Revere I had the opportunity to evaluate.  I liked seeing the different presentations of the story.  Longfellow’s poem is fun to read, with its singsong rhyming scheme.  The other Paul Revere book I reviewed by Krensky had more factual details about the epic night of Revere’s ride.  I felt I learned more from Krensky, but Longfellow’s poem seems to be more memorable and written in 1861, it has an endearing and enduring quality.  It’s fun to read aloud, alone or with others. 

Funny, Ted Rand and Greg Harlan both illustrated different Paul Revere stories, and each books’ painting styles look rather similar.  Beside the differing texts, I wouldn’t be able to differentiate between the two books’ art.  It would have been a more exciting comparison if they had differed in looks more prominently. 
If you liked Longfellow and Rand’s Paul Revere’s Ride, you should check out Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride by Stephen Krensky and Greg Harlin.

***Curriculum Connection:  5th Grade U.S. History, War of Independence, Paul Revere, American Colonies, American Revolutionary War
 
***Rhyme & Rhythm:
Listen, my children, and you shall hear 
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, 
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five, 
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
 
The rhyming aspect is more obvious than the rhythm, but the two go hand in hand.  The rhythm scheme is follows an A-A-B-B-A pattern, where the last word of the lines 1,2, and 5 rhyme and lines 3 and 4 rhyme independently. 

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