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The Revolutionary War Comes Alive

Recent­ly, the record­ed ver­sion of Sophi­a’s War was a School Library Jour­nal Pick of the Day. I extend my thanks to the folks at SLJ.

Here’s what they had to say:

Sophia's WarSet in 1776 dur­ing the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion when New York was under siege by the British, Avi’s tale (S & S/Beach Lane Books, 2012) of resis­tance fea­tures an amaz­ing female pro­tag­o­nist, tri­als aplen­ty as she tries to avenge her broth­er’s death, and a lit­tle romance thrown in for good mea­sure. Sophi­a’s fam­i­ly believes in free­dom and des­per­ate­ly wants Amer­i­ca to gov­ern itself. Her broth­er goes off to fight, is cap­tured, and ends up dying in a filthy hold of a British prison boat. John Andre, a charm­ing Eng­lish offi­cer who is bil­let­ed with Sophi­a’s fam­i­ly, fails to inter­vene to save her broth­er. Despite hav­ing a school­girl crush on Andre, Sophia is con­flict­ed by his fail­ure to save her broth­er. After wit­ness­ing the exe­cu­tion of Nathan Hale, Sophia is deter­mined to help the Amer­i­can cause. Recruit­ed as a spy, she becomes a maid in the home of the com­man­der of the British forces in Amer­i­ca. Sophia uncov­ers some cru­cial infor­ma­tion and sets out to reach West Point before Bene­dict Arnold can turn it over to the British. Avi’s out­stand­ing text and Angela Goethal­s’s spot-on nar­ra­tion make the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War come alive for lis­ten­ers, pro­vid­ing a real sense of the time peri­od. A per­fect choice for school and pub­lic libraries.

Grades 5 to 9. 6 cas­settes or 6 CDs. 7:15 hrs. Record­ed Books. 2012. cas­sette: ISBN 978–1‑4703–2043‑0, CD: ISBN 978–1‑4703–2042‑3. $66.75.

3 thoughts on “The Revolutionary War Comes Alive”

  1. I lis­tened to this nar­ra­tion and agree that both the read­ing and the book are excel­lent! I spent 20 years work­ing for the Library of Con­gress Talk­ing Book pro­gram (the first record­ed books pro­gram, begun in the 1930s) which has much high­er stan­dards than the com­mer­cial stu­dios. Unfor­tu­nate­ly this has made me so picky that things both­er me in most nar­ra­tions that would nev­er both­er any­body else, but this one was real­ly great! As I say, I love the book as well, but I think you, Avi, are con­sis­tent­ly won­der­ful book after book.

    Reply
  2. I LOVED this book filled with his­to­ry and sto­ry, “her-sto­ry”! The lan­guage is deft­ly done as one would expect from the mas­ter­ful Avi! I read it with an 8th grad­er this sum­mer and she loved it, too. My job was to help her grow as a read­er and this hooked her into NF! HIGHLY rec­om­mend. Who did the audio recording?

    Reply

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