I have had to take a short blogging break due to my mother having emergency surgery, therefore I'm more than a week late with the feature book. Better late than never.

This weeks feature book is Paul Revere's Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Listen, my children, and you shall hear-Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere ..." So begins one of the most stirring poems in American literature. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote "Paul Revere's Ride" in 1861, nearly 100 years after the actual midnight ride that began on April 18, in 1775.

The poem creates a suspenseful story as American colonist Paul Revere decides with his friend Robert Newman and others to avert a British attack on Concord, Massachusetts. The British had come from Boston in search of the colonists' arms supply. What Revere and his friends didn't know was whether the Redcoats would come by land (around the mouth of the Charles River) or by sea (across the river). Newman spotted the British "by sea" and signaled from the Old North Church tower to Revere, who was "Ready to ride and spread the alarm-Through every Middlesex village and farm,-For the country folk to be up and to arm." And, by morning, the country folk were ready, indeed. "Chasing the red-coats down the lane,-Then crossing the fields to emerge again-Under the trees at the turn of the road,-And only pausing to fire and load. " This battle, the first of the American Revolution, drove the British back to Boston. Softcover · pgs. 48 · Ages 4-8. You can purchase here.