Joining the Boston Tea Party

Joining the Boston Tea Party by Diane Stanley

Published: 2010

Joining the Boston Tea Party, written by Diane Stanley is a historical fiction book that follows the time-traveling twins back in time to the Boston Tea Party. This story merges together a fictional story of children using their Grandmother's magical hat to go back in time, with the facts and events of the Boston Tea Party in 1773. 

"Then" and "Now" Contrast

Response: Joining the Boston Tea Party places readers within colonial America through the eyes of current-day children, Liz and Lenny, who travel back in time to watch the Boston Tea Party unfold. This book is a fun and engaging twist on a pivotal historical story. I feel that this book is a great addition to classroom libraries because students are able to relate to Liz and Lenny, and connect to their characters. Liz and Lenny are able to join in with the events of the Boston Tea Party, and even throw tea into the Boston Harbor alongside the Sons of Liberty. The story is told from a third-person narrator, however, the author utilizes many speech bubbles for the kids, as well as the colonial characters to demonstrate the contrast of living during the different time periods. The book includes an informative Author's Note that gives facts and a summary of the historical components of the Boston Tea Party. I believe that the part of the book that will resonate with students most is following the Author's Note. There are two pages that compare life during the 1770s to life now, with the technology that developed, popular activities and day to day tasks. This page would be important to discuss with students, as well as allowing them to create their own list and practice comparing how they live to what they discovered while reading this book.

Analysis: In relation to utilizing illustrations, Joining the Boston Tea Party combines many different elements. The illustrator, Holly Berry, utilizes many key elements of effective illustrations as outlined in the article Comprehension Strategies for Reading  Historical Fiction Picture Books (Youngs & Serafini, 2011). First, the illustrator created the images in this book using both the full-bleed as well as the framing technique. This means that while some of the illustrations cover the entire page, other pages have lots of white space in an effort to distance the reader from the story. Berry used the full-bleed technique to establish the "real" in this story. 

Full-bleed technique on the left, and framing technique on the right. 

As seen in the image to the left, the illustration covers the whole page, and is giving the reader a look at the world during colonial times. I believe that this was intentional in an effort to separate the true events from the dialogue and fictional elements brought in by the twins and grandmother in the story. On the contrary, the illustrator uses framing when the time-traveling characters have a dialogue. I believe that this was done to separate the fictional elements and interactions from the real facts of the historical events that are occurring within the book. The article also discusses the concept of using a technique called offer when creating illustrations. Offer is when the characters look at other items or characters, but not directly at the reader. Offer is used for the characters within this story because the reader is on the outside looking in. Since there is a narrator, the reader is watching the story unfold from outside of the book. The characters are not interacting with the narrator, or with the readers. Due to this, Holley uses the offer technique to solidify the boundary between the characters inside, and the readers and narrator outside of the story.