Allison Stark Draper

The book "The Boston Massacre" was very interesting, and I like the language of the book, however I did not like the illustrations that went with the text. The language was very descriptive in a short manner and the way the sentences were worded was very clear, especially for younger children. For example, on page 15 it says "Three or four British soldiers fired their guns. The Americans fought back with sticks and rocks. The British soldiers kept firing. They shot a total of 11 men." The show more information being told is broken down and the words are simplified for understanding. I'm guessing because the pictures could be a little bit confusing to young children reading this book, they put footnotes next to or underneath the pictures help understand and "see" what is happening in the story. For example, on page 6 the text says "The British knew that most Americans did not want to follow British laws. They sent soldiers to Boston to scare the Americans." So the illustration shows British soldiers and Americans standing arguing, however, the British have music instruments, so if there was no text and I didn't know anything about the Boston Massacre, I would think that the Americans and the British started celebrating so sort of victory. The footnote next to the picture on page 6 says "British soldiers tried to keep the American colonists under control."; that allowed me to understand more clearly as to what was going on rather than what the picture showed me. I believe the big picture of this book was to inform children about the Boston Massacre in small amount of time. This book was very short, but held a ton of information, about American and British history. show less