Semiquincentennial Book Review

by Farouqua Abuzeit, Youth Literature and Program Specialist

Two fantastic nonfiction books for kids for our 250th anniversary as a nation:

G. Neri’s My Bicentennial Summer is a memoir about the 7-week road trip Neri took with his family in the summer of 1976.

Eight-year-old Greg Neri’s family of five embarks on a cross-country journey in their 1967 Ford Country Squire station wagon with a pop-up tent trailer, traveling from southern California to the east coast through twenty-six states to celebrate the bicentennial; they stop at many historical sites, both natural and man-made, and spend July 4th in both Washington D.C. and Philadelphia. Neri rode in the “wayback,” a term familiar to all of us who grew up in an era when seatbelts were a mere suggestion, not a legally mandated safety element. The book is a beautiful combination of the author’s own Polaroid photos, illustrations by Corban Wilkin, stock photos, and ephemera from the era. Neri does a great job of capturing the bicentennial moment while incorporating more contemporary concerns; he makes note of his own family’s race (Mexican, Filipino, and Creole) and their sense of belonging and their sense of otherness in the United States. When 8-year-old Neri looks at the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, he questions the “pie-in-the-sky ideas about equality and freedoms” and what these ideas meant to indigenous people, enslaved people, and women. When Neri encounters a parade on July 4th in Philadelphia with marchers protesting racism and inequity in the U.S., it mirrors the questions he felt when reading the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Neri skillfully blends these questions concerning the truth about our country’s origins with his pride and excitement about the bicentennial.

America's Founding Myths ...and What Really Happened! by Christy Mihaly is an entertaining deep dive into U.S. history and the myths that have been passed down for generations and embraced as truth.

America's Founding Myths ...and What Really Happened! is an exquisitely designed, engaging, and humorous look at fifteen historical events in U.S. history including “Did Christopher Columbus REALLY discover America?” and “Was the Boston Massacre REALLY a massacre?” Each question has a spread to itself, jam-packed with information, maps, historical illustrations, modern illustrations, and lift-the-flap “true or false” questions. The book starts with front-matter that asks questions about where history comes from and how truth differs from myth. The book ends with two pages about fact vs. opinion, how kids can document their own history, and a glossary. These pages are followed by a section that tells the reader about the process of creating the book and resources for further research. The design of America's Founding Myths ...and What Really Happened! begs for interaction from the reader and the focus on media literacy makes it a valuable tool for educators and families. Mihaly is fearless in addressing the complexity of our nation and its founding, focusing on facts over romanticism and including the typically marginalized non-Caucasian and female Americans whose contributions are historically left out of American history.

Both My Bicentennial Summer and America's Founding Myths ...and What Really Happened! are important books, arriving at a time when Americans are struggling to agree upon what our nation’s values are and who is permitted to be considered an American.