I Witnessed: The Lizzie Borden Story

by Jeramey Kraatz, Crystal Jayme (Illustrator)

Overview

Charlie witnesses a murder at his next-door neighbor Lizzie Borden's house, but will anyone believe what he saw? For fans of I Survived and Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales but with a true crime twist, read about Lizzie Borden’s trial of the century in this I Witnessed graphic novel.

On the morning of August 4, 1892, fourteen-year-old Charlie sees a horrifying act unfold at his next-door neighbor Lizzie Borden’s house—something he can’t keep to himself. Yet no one believes what Charlie saw . . . not even when Andrew and Abby Borden are found dead later that morning. Charlie is determined to use all that he witnessed to help find the murderer…even if it means having to face the prime suspect, his enigmatic neighbor Lizzie Borden, accused of killing her own father and stepmother. What began as one innocent moment of being in the wrong place at the wrong time becomes a suspenseful game of cat and mouse as Lizzie faces the trial of the century, and Charlie must ask himself: Can you ever really know someone’s true character?

Inspired by the real fourteen-year-old neighbor of Lizzie Borden, Charlie's story offers a fictional kid POV rooted in historical facts about the Borden family, the house, and the infamous trial. Case fact sidebars offer additional nonfiction elements to the story.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063247277
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	03/18/2025
Series:	I Witnessed
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Jeramey Kraatz is the author of the Space Runners series and the Cloak Society series, and he is a graduate of the MFA writing program at Columbia University. Jeramey lives in Texas, where he sometimes teaches, sometimes writes cartoon scripts, and is always up for queso. You can find him at jerameykraatz.com or on Twitter @jerameykraatz.

Editorial Reviews

Borden’s persistently compelling story lends a perfect background for a graphic novel about sensationalism, murder, media, high-profile court cases, and the effect they can have on communities. — School Library Journal

A true whodunit, rich in ambiguities and suggestive hints.  — Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2024-11-09
The story of the 1892 murders of Andrew Jackson Borden and his wife, Abby, and the subsequent trial of daughter Lizzie, told from the perspective of their young neighbor.

Adding a light wash of invented detail to an account otherwise closely based on historical records, Kraatz presents a subtly nuanced view of the gruesome, controversial case. Despite his determination to get to the bottom of things, which leads him into some frightening situations, all 14-year-old Charlie knows about the Bordens next door is that they are a tense and unhappy family, and all he sees is a hatchet-wielding shadow in a covered window. But even though Lizzie is ultimately acquitted of the murders of her father and stepmother, in Charlie’s mind a residue of fear and suspicion remains—which Lizzie’s own remote, collected manner in chance encounters before and after the killings does nothing to dispel. Indeed, nearly everything she and her equally reserved younger sister, Emma, say seems freighted with double meanings that carry suggestions of secrets, buried emotional currents, and perhaps even complicity. The enigmatic expressions on their faces in Jayme’s somber, two-color scenes brilliantly underscore this ambiguity. Readers can’t help but come away less titillated by the case’s sensational aspects than disquieted by feelings that one or both of the surviving sisters knew things about that day that they silently carried to their graves.

A true whodunit, rich in ambiguities and suggestive hints.(Graphic historical fiction. 11-13)

Kirkus Reviews

01/01/2025

Gr 7 Up—We all know the rhyme "Lizzie Borden took an ax," which has stubbornly persisted in popular memory since shortly after the grisly 1892 murders of Andrew and Abby Borden, despite being blatantly inaccurate—Borden was not found guilty, Abby was not her mother, and there were not as many whacks as the rhyme suggests. Kraatz's and Jayme's well-researched historical fiction examines the case and provides detail and context that is missed by the generally accepted narrative of the tragedy. Told through the experience of Borden's neighbor, 14-year-old Charlie Churchill, this blend of fiction and history is less an indictment of Borden or any other possible murderers, and more an exploration of an event that became a viral sensation, predating memes by about a hundred years. Once she is arrested, the country is divided, and everyone, it seems, has an opinion based on very little information. Readers gain a nuanced view through Charlie as he tries to sort out the events of that horrible day, torn between the sensationalism of it all and his levelheaded mother's gentle admonitions that an opinion cannot be formed without having all of the facts. VERDICT Borden's persistently compelling story lends a perfect background for a graphic novel about sensationalism, murder, media, high-profile court cases, and the effect they can have on communities.—Sarah Maciejewski

School Library Journal