Caldecott Medal Contender: Ben’s Revolution

by Sam Juliano

Evoking the immortal oil paintings of John Trumbull, Benjamin West and Archibald Willard, children’s literature luminary Wendell Minor, whose work has graced the covers of acclaimed biographical and historical volumes, has turned his eye on key events of the American Revolution, producing one lush tapestry after another in a picture book titled Ben’s Revolution: Benjamin Russell and the Battle of Bunker Hill, written by Nathaniel Philbrick.  The author culled a single episode from his 2013 work Bunker Hill, focusing on the complicity of a thirteen year old boy during the war’s earliest stages.  The British prevailed in what was tantamount to a Pyrrhic victory, as the colonists’ tenacity and heavy inflicting of casualties on the British redcoats served notice on their enemy while emboldening their own resolve.

Ben’s Boston  Philbrick sub-divides the ported over chapter into twenty-one mini sections.  Too short to be labeled “chapters” they are just topic divisions for young readers aimed at serving notice when the narrative either shifts in tone or setting.  A calm before the storm is posed in the two paragraph opening, when Ben, oblivious to mounting tensions, tends to the family cow near the saltwater “Back Bay” around his school hours, when he also helps his father’s printer friend Isaiah Thomas, fitting letters into words and learning their power far more efficaciously than he did in the classroom.  The Patriots Rebel!  Philbrick’s concise telling of the reason for the “Boston Tea Party” and the encapsulation of its execution is magnificently envisioned in Minor’s initial double page canvas, a nocturnal triumph for Patriots deciding the right timing was upon them.  The artist’s mutinous capture includes a hanging Union Jack and the incandescence emanating from lanterns on the dock, in life boats and on board of the Dartmouth, under a moon sliver far less illuminative than the “ghostly galleon” in Alfred Noyes’ famous poem about a colonial bandit gunned down by the redcoats.

Recrimination as set forth by the crown included an order for the colonists to pay for the tea they destroyed, a reviled edict that led to the newspaper headline “Americans! Liberty or Death! JOIN OR DIE!” printed and circulated by Thomas.  Minor’s painting of the arrival of the ship bringing General Gage and a contingent of soldiers at the break of dawn to maintain discipline is symbolic of the last real vestiges of peace with the War of Independence on the proverbial horizon.  Ben and his friends are increasingly aware of the mounting tensions, camping themselves at the Boston Common, regaling the soon-to-be-enemy with chants of “Go Home, Redcoats” in Philbrick’s fourth entry.  Minor’s vivid red on the British soldiers’ uniforms is dominant in the tapestry featuring Israel Putnam’s arrival on a food coach.  In “Boys’ Rights’ Ben and his friends bravely rap on the door of a British soldier who had stymied their sledding efforts by laying down ashes on the icy street the boys always favored during the winter months.  but the boys found out this soldier sympathized with their plans and ordered his servant to pour water over the troublesome ashes.  Ice was quickly reinstated.  Minor’s resplendent sleigh-riding tableau across two pages is one of the book’s pictorial jewels, a stand alone depiction of winter bliss orchestrated by lamp light poles and a steep incline past brick and shingled buildings in late eighteenth century Boston.  The illustrator’s soft white blurred streaks create motion, and extended blue and red scarves seal the deal.

VI.  Leaving Boston Evacuation of Beantown follows leaked information that Britain was preparing to send in more troops and make some arrests of important colonist leaders like John Hancock.  In a dockside tapestry that strikingly recalls comparable watercolor paintings from Brinton Terkel’s exquisite Caldecott Honor book Thy Friend Obadiah which is set in the same region but several decades earlier, Minor depicts the startling moment of realization for Ben that even the courageous Thomas is gone from his print shop, leaving Ben at a loss for words.  The double page spread depicting colonists leaving the port city fondly recalls Minor’s exquisite art for 2016’s Willa, the picture book biography of American literary icon Willa Cather.  Her celebrated O Pioneers is especially evoked.  “The First Shots!” explores the reactions of school boys after the war’s official launching with Concord and Lexington.  At the latter location eight American militiamen were killed stunning the students, and moving “Master Carter” to look at them sadly, albeit with a tinge of excitement.  His declaration “The war’s begun, and you may run” is solemnly contrasted with what the German schoolmaster in Erich Maria Remarque’s World War I classic All Quiet on the Western Front barked at his own charges, in urging them to fight for the Motherland in foolhardy patriotism that send many naive teens to an early grave.  Philbrick’s historical account accurately documents the rightful role of young people, in helping the cause in vital ways not including the bearing of arms.

Minor sees the British army as disciplined and coordinated in a horizontal line of red and white, a daunting ghostly force seemingly invincible against comparatively ill-equipped colonists who were also initially lesser in number.  Young readers will come to know the meaning of “Yankee Doodle” in section VIII when British soldiers sing the song to buffoon the brashness and immaturity of the New England upstarts:   Yankee Doodle went to town, Riding on a pony; He stuck a feather in his hat; And called it macaroni.  Ben and his cohorts taught the British soldiers, who extend a free pass because of their age.  Minor’s pictorial insertion allows for a bit of comic levity as the destructive reality of war is underway.  sharp-eyed viewers will notice the detailed tableau of Ben and his friend watching a line of redcoats passing by them as they lie in a grassy clearing behind a tree.  The square bronze shoe buckles, the blue knotted bow on the one boy’s pony tail, the colonial era hat and the square soldier pouches are highlighted in this observation perch painting.  Matters turn critical, when the boys are approached by a young militiaman who explains to them that the whistling they are hearing is actually the sound of musket balls.  They are strongly urged to seek out a safer place, which winds up as a building that belonged to Harvard College in Cambridge.  But by then, after hearing the British had sealed off Boston, the boys knew they were trapped, having no way to reach their families.

Ben helped deliver food to militiamen chosen by General Artemus Ward, who was challenged with the task of turning farmers into soldiers.  Specifically he became the clerk for Israel Putman, the colonist he had first met the year before, when the chubby patriot delivered the sheep for Bostonians during the period when tensions escalated.  A mix up by soldiers who were supposed to dig an earthen fort to defend Charlestown against British attack on Bunker Hill, but instead dug it on Breed’s Hill, allowed British to observe the effort, and launch an attack that ended up one of the bloodiest battle of the war.  The colonists weren’t prepared.  The artist’s subsequent painting of Colonel William Prescott standing on a hill holding his sword while cannonballs explode around him vividly transcribes the reality of how a single millimeter can mean the difference between life and death and how luck plays a role in one’s fate.   Still unable to gain an entry point to Boston the boys watch from across the harbor as another battle appears imminent.  The detailed perspective on the double page canvas is another of the book’s dramatic re-creations of scenes part and parcel of the event, fictional narrative license notwithstanding.  The three boys watch as Ben’s points out a British ship identified by its flag, while in the background others are setting up for the expected harbor battle.  In the fourteenth section titled “Outnumbered” Ben discovers that ships were just about all British manned and crowded with soldiers at that.  The illustrator’s capture of explosions, smoke and cannonballs firing on the city of Charlestown is a superlative transcription of sea and land attack chaos.  The author notes that after one house burst into flames the entire city was engulfed.

Trench warfare is introduced in “Mixed Emotions” where Ben is teary eyed pondering the fate of the kind British officer who helped he and his friends when their sleds were originally unable to work properly during the Boston winter.  The enlargement of Ben overlooking the fiery madness is a powerful visualization of Philbrick’s main protagonist, and it is rightly replicated on the fabulous inside cover.  The artist’s brush flicks and color blending create a scene of devastation, one obscured by heavy smoke.  Philbrick chronicles the third charge up the hill by British lines previously repulsed in “The Bitter End” and “Not Defeated.”  This decisive strategy, one the author describes as the British moving forward “in narrow columns instead of a long, white line” with back-ups taking the place of those felled by colonial gunfire resulted in heavy losses for the redcoats, but in the end they reached the top after the colonist ran out of gunpowder.  Colonel Prescott, who is historically remembered for telling his troops “Do not fire till you see the whites in their eyes” to increase chances of success was forced to call realizing that rocks and musket butts were no match for the well-armed Brits in a scenario bringing to mind the Ethiopians fighting against the Italian army during the Second War.  Minor’s impressionist frantic hill advance with the soldiers’ drawn muskets recalls in battle intensity Turnbull’s famous painting The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill, if not quite for the oil application certainly for the lethal hand to hand combat.  British General Howe conceded the victory came at far too great a cost, what with nearly a thousand men killed or wounded on his side.

The illustrator’s pictorial call to arms for Philbrick’s “The New Commander” is a worthy addition to the Washington Hall of Fame of Paintings, and the true coming of age for Ben who “was proud to be a part of the fight for freedom.”  In succession Ben meets his father in an unexpected reunion and in a narrative development that will readily envision Esther Forbes’s classic Newbery novel Johnny Tremain, he is employed as an apprentice by his old friend Isaiah Thomas who resumed publishing the Massachusetts Spy.  Minor evokes the committed work of the newly minted artisan in a shop committed to upholding the credo Join or Die.  One of Minor’s greatest tapestries in this or any of his works is the British evacuation via Boston Harbor, a result of Washington and Howe’s agreement to allow the departure if no fire destruction is enacted prior.  A thousand loyalists (Think Pennsylvanian John Dickinson of the Second Continental Congress) join the redcoat withdrawal in an expansive tableau sublimely etched with the uniform and Old Glory reds on the busy blue water.  The dock loading, seagulls and striking perspective make this an all-time Minor classic.  The twenty-first and concluding section documents “Independence!” and glorious moment when Thomas and Benjamin visit the South Church in Worchester to witness a reading of the Declaration of Independence.  Later at fourteen years old Ben (later identified in Philbrick’s afterward as Benjamin Russell) set the type to the article reported the event in the Massachusetts Spy.

Ben’s Revolution: Benjamin Russell and the Battle of Bunker Hill was recently named one of the very best picture books of 2017 by the New York Public Library Board.  It has won wide acclaim, starred reviews and adulation as a glowing example of how to successfully encapsulate and enrich a single chapter from a longer historical volume.  The book certainly conforms to Caldecott guidelines that specify the illustrations much relate the story at least as much as the words do alone.  Philbrick and Minor have collaborated on a masterpiece no matter what the final sub-categorization is, and among books on the American Revolution this is one of the finest ever.  No doubt the committee will be as ravished as the public with frame worthy tapestries that bring our history to life and confirms yet again what a national treasure Wendell Minor is.

Celebrated author Nathaniel Philbrick

Renowned artist Wendell Minor with his acclaimed author wife Florence Friedman Minor

Note:  This is the twentieth entry in the 2017 Caldecott Medal Contender series.  The annual venture does not purport to predict what the committee will choose, rather it attempts to gauge what the writer feels should be in the running.  In most instances the books that are featured in the series have been touted as contenders in various online round-ups, but for the ones that are not, the inclusions are a humble plea to the committee for consideration.  It is anticipated the series will include in the neighborhood of around 30 titles; the order which they are being presented in is arbitrary, as every book in this series is a contender.  Some of my top favorites of the lot will be done near the end.  The awards will be announced in mid-February, hence the reviews will continue until around the end of January or through the first week of February.