1789: Twelve Authors Explore a Year of Rebellion, Revolution, and Change

by Marc Aronson (Editor), Susan Campbell Bartoletti (Editor)

Overview

The acclaimed team that brought us 1968 turns to another year that shook the world with a collection of nonfiction writings by renowned young-adult authors.

“The Rights of Man.” What does that mean? In 1789 that question rippled all around the world. Do all men have rights—not just nobles and kings? What then of enslaved people, women, the original inhabitants of the Americas? In the new United States a bill of rights was passed, while in France the nation tumbled toward revolution. In the Caribbean preachers brought word of equality, while in the South Pacific sailors mutinied. New knowledge was exploding, with mathematicians and scientists rewriting the history of the planet and the digits of pi. Lauded anthology editors Marc Aronson and Susan Campbell Bartoletti, along with ten award-winning nonfiction authors, explore a tumultuous year when rights and freedoms collided with enslavement and domination, and the future of humanity seemed to be at stake.

Some events and actors are familiar: Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, Marie Antoinette and the Marquis de Lafayette. Others may be less so: the eloquent former slave Olaudah Equiano, the Seneca memoirist Mary Jemison, the fishwives of Paris, the mathematician Jurij Vega, and the painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun. But every chapter brings fresh perspectives on the debates of the time, inviting readers to experience the passions of the past and ask new questions of today.

Featuring contributors:

Amy Alznauer
Marc Aronson
Susan Campbell Bartoletti
Summer Edward
Karen Engelmann
Joyce Hansen
Cynthia and Sanford Levinson
Steve Sheinkin
Tanya Lee Stone
Christopher Turner
Sally M. Walker

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781536208733
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	09/01/2020
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	164,812
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)
Lexile:	1150L (what's this?)
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

Marc Aronson is the author and editor of many titles for young people, including War Is . . . : Soldiers, Survivors, and Storytellers Talk About War, coedited by Patty Campbell; Master of Deceit: J. Edgar Hoover and America in the Age of Lies; Sir Walter Raleigh and the Quest for El Dorado, winner of the Robert F. Sibert Medal; and 1968: Today's Authors Explore a Year of Rebellion, Revolution, and Change, co-edited by Susan Campbell Bartoletti. Marc Aronson teaches at Rutgers University and lives in Maplewood, New Jersey.

Susan Campbell Bartoletti is the author of numerous picture books, novels, and nonfiction books for young people. Her nonfiction work includes Growing Up in Coal Country; Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine, 1845–1850; Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow; and They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group. She is the recipient of a Newbery Honor, a Robert F. Sibert Medal and Honor, and an Orbis Pictus Award and Honor. The recipient of the Washington Post–Children’s Book Guild Nonfiction Award for her body of work, she teaches in the MFA program at Spalding University in Kentucky.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Age of Revolutions 1

Exhilaration 6

"The Fishwives make the Rules" Tanya Lee Stone 9

The Contradictory King Karen Engelmann 20

Pi, Vega, and the Battle at Belgrade Amy Alznauer 32

Abomination 42

The Queen's Chemise Susan Campbell Bartoletti 45

The Choice Marc Aronson 63

"All Men are Created Equal" Joyce Hansen 76

Inspiration 88

The Wesleyans in the West Indies Summer Edward 91

Who Counted in America? Cynthia Levinson Sanford Levinson 103

Mary Jemison and the Seneca Nation Christopher Turner 116

Conclusions 126

Challenging Time Sally M. Walker 129

Mutiny on the Bounty Steve Sheinkin 141

Author Notes 155

Source Notes 174

Bibliography 186

Index 195

Editorial Reviews

★ 10/19/2020

Aronson and Bartoletti (1968: Today’s Authors Explore a Year of Rebellion, Revolution, and Change) offer a timely deep dive into another turbulent and pivotal year of history: 1789. Thought-provoking essays by 12 nonfiction authors rewind to the period when structures of imperialism and slavery collided with Enlightenment ideas of individual rights and freedoms. Cynthia and Sanford Levinson examine unresolved contradictions in U.S. founding documents in “Who Counted in America?”—while Joyce Hansen’s “All Men Are Created Equal” recounts the life of Olaudah Equiano, a Methodist abolitionist who was enslaved as a child and published his famous autobiography in 1789. In “The Choice,” Aronson details the complex negotiations between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings in Paris on the eve of the French Revolution. The conversational narrative styles will pull readers into this wide-ranging, thoroughly researched anthology, which recounts revolutions and revolutionary thinking big and small. Extensive author and source notes and a bibliography conclude this stirring read about themes that continue to shape urgent contemporary issues. Ages 12–up. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Each chapter is thoughtfully written and thoroughly researched, with extensive author notes, endnotes, and a bibliography...Another thoroughly engrossing look at a pivotal year.
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Aronson and Bartoletti (1968: Today’s Authors Explore a Year of Rebellion, Revolution, and Change) offer a timely deep dive into another turbulent and pivotal year of history: 1789...The conversational narrative styles will pull readers into this wide-ranging, thoroughly researched anthology, which recounts revolutions and revolutionary thinking big and small. Extensive author and source notes and a bibliography conclude this stirring read about themes that continue to shape urgent contemporary issues.
—Publishers Weekly Online (starred review)

An essay collection that will attract readers who want to learn about the history of personal freedoms or have a deep interest in the topic.
—School Library Journal

As they did in their previous anthology, 1968: Today’s Authors Explore a Year of Rebellion, Revolution & Change, the editors take a pivotal year in world history and, through eleven essays (by authors including themselves, Joyce Hansen, Steven Sheinkin, and Summer Edward), explore global revolutionary themes...Each essay can be appreciated individually, but the overall picture, of societies reconciling competing ideas of science and faith or equality and oppression, becomes clearer throughout the book. Appended with author notes, documentation, and a complete bibliography of sources.
—The Horn Book

This collection of eleven wide-ranging essays bridges American and world history course matter to demonstrate that episodes encountered as disparate curricular units emerged from a Zeitgeist of revolutionary thought.
—Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

From the Publisher

07/01/2020

Gr 9 Up—Editors Aronson and Bartoletti (1968: Today's Authors Explore a Year of Rebellion, Revolution, and Change) and a team of young adult authors dissect a pivotal year in world history. The text covers a variety of topics, some of which will be well known to an American audience, such as the French Revolution, William Bligh and the mutiny of the HMS Bounty, and Sally Hemings. But most events and names are less familiar to the target demographic. Overall, the contributors examine the advancement of human rights and personal liberties. The authors also study the people who had these privileges while exploring the suppression of women and people of color. Some of the essays are thoroughly engaging. Tanya Lee Stone presents a compelling summary of the early days of the French Revolution and the role of the food market fishwives; Bartoletti effectively captures the spirit of artist Élisabeth Vigée; and Steve Sheinkin's summary of the mutiny on the Bounty is highly entertaining. However, several essays (such as Amy Alznauer's spotlight on the number pi and mathematician Jurij Vega) feel tedious and seem to focus more on theorizing and offering imagery than presenting facts. VERDICT An essay collection that will attract readers who want to learn about the history of personal freedoms or have a deep interest in the topic. However, the book falls short on general appeal despite the draw of big-name contributors.—Karen Bilton, Franklin Township P.L., NJ

School Library Journal

★ 2020-06-25
As they did in 1968 (2018), Aronson and Bartoletti examine a single year through many different angles, focusing particularly on liberty, subjugation, and the question of who counts as a person.

Tanya Lee Stone opens the volume with the fishwives of Les Halles marching on Versailles. Bartoletti tells the story of Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, who painted Marie Antoinette wearing a casual cotton chemise—a small act of rebellion. Meanwhile, formerly enslaved West African Olaudah Equiano publishes his autobiography in London; the Swedish king, Gustav III, enacts a surprising degree of social equality; Jurij Vega, a soldier in Belgrade, calculates pi to 140 digits; and a Scottish geologist called James Hutton begins to understand the true age of the Earth. Mary Jemison, born into a Scottish Irish settler family but adopted into the Seneca Nation, relays messages between the new Americans and the democratic Haudenosaunee. Wesleyan missionaries—including Equiano, a convert and abolitionist—upset the social order by bringing Christianity to enslaved West Indians. And a mutiny on the Bounty disrupts the food chain to the sugar plantations. By the end, topics which start out as snapshots are shown to be pieces of a larger portrait, giving the reader a broad sense of the turmoil in the United States and Europe at this time. Each chapter is thoughtfully written and thoroughly researched, with extensive author notes, endnotes, and a bibliography.

Another thoroughly engrossing look at a pivotal year. (Nonfiction. 12-18)

Kirkus Reviews