I Found the Time...

“If I Had the Time…” has been the heading of a number of blogs listing new non-fiction books that librarians here at DPL find intriguing but just do not have the time to read. In one such blog post for the Children’s Room, I listed King George: What was his Problem? : Everything your schoolbooks didn't tell you about the American Revolution by Steve Sheinkin. After years of writing American history textbooks, Steve Sheinkin used all the amazing stories and quotes that he collected in his research to write this funny, simplified, but entirely true account of the American Revolution. History was never my favorite subject but this book looked like fun so I finally found the time to read it. If school textbook editors had allowed Sheinkin to write history books like this one, I would have looked forward to my history homework reading assignments.
Here is one scene that Sheinkin recounts involving Samuel Adams and John Hancock as they high tail it out of Lexington after Paul Revere’s warning:

“When Samuel Adams heard the explosion of gunfire from Lexington, he had a pretty good
idea of what just happened.

“Oh, what a glorious morning is this,” he said.

John Hancock thought Adams was talking about the weather, which was not bad, but not
glorious. Adams clarified: “I mean, what a glorious morning for America.”

What was so glorious about it? Adams must have been thinking that those early-morning
shots would be the start of a long, hard fight for American independence.

Hancock must have been thinking about lunch. He sent a messenger back to Lexington,
instructing Dorothy and Aunt Lydia to meet him in Woburn (where Adams and Hancock were
now headed). He told them to “bring the fine salmon” that they had planned to eat that day.

Wait a minute. The American Revolution just started, and we’re talking about salmon.
What just happened back there on Lexington Common?”

I, for one, had to find out! And, when Steve Sheinkin’s second volume, Two Miserable Presidents: Everything your schoolbooks didn’t tell you about the Civil War, was added to our collection, I found the time to read that, too!