How I Found the Strong: A Civil War Story

by Margaret McMullan

Overview

In 1861 Frank “Shanks” Russell wishes he was old enough to fight for the South alongside his pa and big brother. But Frank is too young, skinny, and weak, and is left behind with his mother and grandparents. Life in Mississippi was simple before the war between North and South. Now Frank’s boyhood is gone forever, along with his dreams of heroic battles. The shortages and horrors of war reach his home as he scrounges for food and water, and sees both Confederate and enemy soldiers at their worst. As time goes by and Frank’s friendship with Buck, the family slave, grows, he questions more and more who is the enemy and why the terrible war is being fought.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780553494921
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	04/11/2006
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	4.25(w) x 6.75(h) x 0.38(d)
Lexile:	860L (what's this?)
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

Margaret McMullan is the author of seven award-winning novels, including In My Mother's House, Aftermath Lounge, Sources of Light, When I Crossed No-Bob, and How I Found the Strong. She also edited the anthology Every Father's Daughter, a Parade magazine "Sizzling Summer Read." Margaret writes for both adults and young adults, and she is especially interested in how historical events affect ordinary people. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Herald, Glamour, The Millions, Southern Accents, TriQuarterly, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Greensboro Review, Mississippi Magazine, Other Voices, Boulevard, Ploughshares, Teachers & Writers Magazine, National Geographic for Kids, and The Sun, among others. A recipient of a 2010 NEA Fellowship in literature and a 2010 Fulbright scholarship to teach in Hungary, Margaret is the National Author Winner of the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award. Visit her website at margaretmcmullan.com

Editorial Reviews

Spring of 1861 in Mississippi, with laurel and Indian pipe blooming in the woods, is "too pretty out for a war." But war comes and takes with it Frank Russell's father and older brother. Left home with women, children, and old men, Frank wishes he were his brother Henry. Growing up, observing the people around him, and losing his grandfather, his grandmother, and others, Frank must find the strength to do the right things-to walk a slave to freedom and to save his father's life. Rooted in family history, McMullan's first work for children is exquisitely written, its elegant prose fully up to portraying both the pastoral beauty of Mississippi and the horrors of war. The short, sometimes graphic story carries layers of meaning, evoking the complicated legacies of the South and the new world coming in the war's terrible wake. Match this with Richard Peck's The River Between Us (2003) for a pair of superb Civil War stories. Unforgettable. (author's note) (Fiction. 10+)

Kirkus Reviews