The ‘My Name is America’ series is similar to the ‘Dear America’ series in the way that the historical fiction books are written as diary entries, but ‘My Name is America’ is written from boys’ points of view. This particular book does not focus on specific events of the revolution, but rather the personal daily life of one boy- which makes this book unique. William Thomas Emerson is a 12 year old orphan boy who ran away from his foster parents and ended up in Boston in 1774. His journal entries tell stories of how he worked for and was mentored by an older man named Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson introduced William to the ‘colonial cause’ and William eventually became a spy for the Patriots.
I think that this book would be a great option to include in literature circles to, once again, integrate language arts with history. The format of this book may be unusual but interesting to students, as each chapter is actually a different diary entry. This book gives insight, through fictional first-hand accounts, of what it may have been like for a child to live during the time of the revolution. Rather than reading about major events from a textbook that may be difficult to comprehend, students can better understand and relate to the diary entries in this book. After reading this book, a potential activity for students would be to document their life for a week by writing diary entries in a similar format to William’s entries.
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