​   Sometimes when you begin to read a book, you find your attention wandering. Some books just do not grab you from the start. I found this to be the case with The Bone Rattler by Eliot Pattison. Yet, I could not stop reading and go on to something different. I figured if this book won the Edgar Award – surely there was a reason why. Yesterday, when I finished the book I knew why. Pattison created historical characters that I am sure lived and breathed. His characters, so finely fleshed out, reminded me of Augustus McCrae and Woodrow F. Call of McMurty’s Lonesome Dove.
   Pattison’s historical setting full of details, languages, and intrigue began to invade my thoughts until I could get back to the book and read more. The Bone Rattler is a mystery story sent in colonial America. Upstate New York to be exact – in 1759. Yet, it is so much more than a mystery. It is a story of Duncan McCallum, a Scot, now a prisoner. It is the story of him learning, understanding, surviving, and living in a new totally foreign mixture of cultures, all why trying to solve the mystery of two men’s deaths aboard a ship from England to the New World.
   The Bone Rattler is the first in a series. I will be reading more, because I learned about my country’s early history from a totally new perspective. This is no dry history. It is not a textbook. It is the story of survival in the new colonies told through the tale of Duncan McCallum.
    I recommend it highly. 

​ntil I read Yakimali’s Gift (see <https://bit.ly/2Fza6nF>) I knew nothing about the settlement of California by Mexico or the Anza Expeditions. Thanks to Linda Covella, I have now read two excellent books on the second expedition. I have also researched events through numerous websites. One thing I discovered is the similarities of the Anza Expeditions and the Oregon and California Trails taken by so many Americans in the mid-1800s, about 75 years after those of the Mexican peoples to California. 

I hope you will enjoy The Power of a Dream, Linda’s beautiful picture book telling of the story of Maria Feliciana Arballo, one of the Latina Pioneers. This book for younger grades will introduce children to this fascinating period of history.  For older students and adults, try Yakimali’s Gift, a fictional telling of the expedition, but based on facts and excellent history.

Additional Resources:
Websites:
https://lindacovella.com/yakimalis-gift/historical-character-maria-feliciana-arballo/
http://www.anzahistorictrail.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Bautista_de_Anza
https://sfbaytimetraveler.wordpress.com/about/the-anza-expedition/
http://verdugofamilyhistory.blogspot.com/2013/02/february-28-1808-death-of-maria.html
https://www.sierracollege.edu/ejournals/jsnhb/v3n2/font.html
https://www.nps.gov/juba/index.htm

Other Books:
Anza Conquers the Desert: The Anza Expeditions from Mexico to California and the Founding of San Francisco, 1744 to 1776 by Richard F Pourade

Films:
The Anza Expedition (National Park Service Film) at:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPwSliMxeiU (Highly recommended)
Don Garate as Juan Bautista de Anza at:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb1G5PVwpTw  (Highly Recommended)​

Having read Jennifer Nielsen's Resistance only a week ago, I decided to go ahead and read A Night Divided. Unlike Resistance, Divided seemed to me to be slow start; however, the action/plot picked up quickly and the fear created by the situation increases to a dramatic ending.  Nielsen created an East Germany, hidden behind the wall, that is familiar to those of my age. I lived in West Germany for six years and once took a tour to see that infamous wall. I read stories about escapes and escape attempts. 

I believe this book should be required reading for all students, as its story transcends all time, all settings, and all history. It is a story of freedom.



Learn More at:
https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/berlin-wall
​https://news.usc.edu/71860/remembering-the-night-the-berlin-wall-went-up-and-when-it-came-down/

Video:
https://yhoo.it/2DcXctc

​​Recommended by my daughter, who homeschools her two sons (high school and middle school), I read Resistance by Jennifer A. Nielsen in two days. Nielsen took the plight of the Jews resistance during the Holocaust and revealed it through the eyes of a teen-age girl. Riveting is not quite a strong enough word for her story, as the action, the fear, the bravery, the heart ache, the death, and the heroism never once stops from the first sentence to the last.  
Having previously read about the Warsaw Ghetto, I found myself more prepared to read about these atrocities; yet, the book’s emotional pull brought the horror of what was done to these victims strongly into focus. I highly recommend this book to all high school students and adults. Yes, it was written as a children’s/teen’s book, but that should not deter you. This book could be read by emotionally advanced middle-grade students.

I have provided some additional resources about this subject. I highly recommend the first video.

Websites:
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/warsaw
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/warsaw-ghetto-uprising
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-warsaw.htm

Outstanding Videos:
https://yhoo.it/2RFdKUK
https://yhoo.it/2AYA559
 
Lesson Plans:
From “Echos & Reflections” at https://bit.ly/2RGkOjF
From “Facing History” at https://bit.ly/2R4fLV8

Children’s Books:
Survivors: True Stories of Children in the Holocaust by Allan Zullo
Sevek and the Holocaust : The Boy Who Refused to Die by Sidney Finkel
Kindertransport: A Child's Journey by Kena Sosa (see my review at https://bit.ly/2DqnwRU)

Adult Books:
Surviving the Fatherland: A True Coming-of-age Love Story Set in WWII Germany 
by Annette Oppenlander.  
My Review: Surviving the Fatherland is a marvelous book for teaching another side of the story of World War II. The book tells the stories of two children, living in Solingen, Germany, and unknown to each other during the war years. The book is divided into chapters based on the subject, Gunter or Lilly and the year. The first 29 chapters take the reader through the war and are fine for upper middle grade students. However, parents should be aware that explicit sex scenes in the remainder of the book may not be suitable for younger readers.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this book. Having lived in Germany for six years, I saw the remains of the destruction caused by the war, especially the bombings. The book puts people into the ruins and shows the horrors of war on citizens, especially the women and children. 
​
Irena's Children: The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto by Tilar J. Mazzeo
We Were the Lucky Ones: A Novel by Georgia Hunter

​Before World War I in Great Britain many men joined the military to perform their patriotic duty to save their country from an invasion by the “German hordes.” When, on 1 August 1914, the United Kingdom and Ireland declared war on German after their invasion of Belgium and France, most UK residents feared they would soon be subjected to an invasion by Germany. Despite the hysteria, some of Great Britain’s men did not wish to serve for a variety of reasons including a desire to see a diplomatic peace instead of war.  

A newspaper, the Guardian, pushed for women to join the Order of the White Feather, founded on 30 August 1914 by Admiral Charles Fitzgerald, which encouraged women to give out white feathers to young men who had not joined the British army. Admiral Fitzgerald gave out white feathers to 30 women, giving instructions to hand them out to men who had cowardly not enlisted in the army. The idea of the white feather as a symbol for cowardice and disapproval comes from a popular novel written by the British author A.E.W. Mason in 1902, during the Boer War. In the story the main character decides to not follow his troop as they go to fight in Sudan, with reasonable justification. He receives three white feathers from fellow soldiers, and a fourth from his fiancé, who breaks up with him.

Can you imagine, a young man in civilian clothes going about his daily routine and duties being handed a white feather by a well-dressed young woman simply because he was not in uniform? This happened all over Britain, often causing crowds to gather to ridicule the man, throw rotten vegetables at him, or even to beat him up. Other such conscientious objectors were arrested and thrown in jail where they were beaten by guards.  Some of these men were as young as 15 or 16 years of age!  Many men joined simply to avoid the public humiliation.

I think I’ll start with a tidbit of ancient archaeology - not too ancient - and not real archaeology.

You see, in the 18th and 19th centuries, many archaeologists greatly resembled Indiana Jones—that is to say they were treasure hunters! Working on behalf of museums, wealthy collectors, and even governments, they excavated/studied ancient civilizations with the idea of finding valuable “artifacts” to bring home and sell. Few had any formal education or training.

Museums in the civilized world, mainly Europe, supported these treasure hunters. These “archaeologists” would search out old, buried sites, hire diggers who simply excavated for valuable finds and were paid little, and left with anything they deemed worthy of their attention. Many seldom got their hands dirty and lived in luxury with servants to do their every chore. They cared nothing for the thousands upon thousands of broken pottery sherds or even bits and pieces of mummies.  Former circus strongman, Giovanni Batista Belzoni supplied the demands of many European museums by “hacking, fighting and blasting his way into ancient tombs.”  He even wrote in his memoirs. 

“I sought a resting place, found one and contrived to sit; but when my weight bore on the body of an Egyptian, it crushed like a band-box . . . I sunk altogether among the broken mummies, with a crash of bones, rags and wooden cases. . . every step I took I crushed a mummy in some part or other.”

Today’s archaeologists carefully excavate using scientific methods, uncovering and recording each and every find with precision. They believe it is unethical to sell anything they recover. Most are paid by private funding, universities, or the government. They have a minimum of an undergraduate degree in archaeology or anthropology, and many hold masters and doctorates in various related specialties. They write detailed reports about their findings, documenting all their work for others to read and use for comparisons.

So next time you go to a museum and see artifacts from an ancient civilization. Ask how these artifacts came to be in a museum. Who excavated the site? When was it excavated? If the site was excavated before 1900, you can now wonder what did they leave behind?  What might we have learned about these ancient peoples using modern methods and technology?

Just a Thought: Read about the Rosetta Stone.  Who excavated it?  When?  How did it end up in the British Museum?   

Source: The Atlas of Archaeology by K. Branigan 
Title Image: 1851 sketch of Layard's expedition removing a Lamassu (bull)