Timothy Donovan's Story - Softcover

For decades, Carolyn Reeder's life was defined by roles and passages. First, the daughter growing up in Washington, D.C., next a student at The American University, and finally the longest-held roles of all: wife, mother, teacher. She is still a wife, but she is an out-of-work mother now that her children are grown, and she left her job as a reading teacher in order to have more time to write. Now, instead of roles, she has facets hiker, table tennis player, history buff, book lover, friend, theater goer, writer. . . Today, writing is an end in itself, but at first it was simply an outgrowth of the Reeder family's hiking experiences in Shenandoah National Park. It all began when Carolyn and her husband wrote a nonfiction adult book about the mountain people who were displaced when the park was established. They worked together on two more books about the history of that area of Virginia and its people before Carolyn began to write historical fiction for children and young teens. Carolyn Reeder's career as a writer took off when her first novel, Shades of Gray, won the Scott O Dell Award for Historical Fiction and numerous other honors. Her books often appear on the recommended reading lists of schools and libraries as well as on state reading award master lists. Several novels have been recognized as Notable Children s Trade Books in the Field of Social Studies or listed on the New York Public Library s Books for the Teenage. Asked why she chose to write historical fiction, Carolyn Reeder replies, "My childhood enjoyment of the Little House Books no doubt pointed me in that direction, but the main reason is that I enjoy the research. Research is my excuse to read in depth on fascinating subjects, to talk with people I wouldn't otherwise meet, to go places that I wouldn t ordinarily think of visiting and to call it work." Carolyn Reeder s historical fiction for young people: Across the Lines The Before the Creeks Ran Red Trilogy: Timothy Donovan's Story Joseph Schwartz's Story Gregory Howard's Story Captain Kate Foster's War Grandpa's Mountain Moonshiner's Son Shades of Gray The Secret Project Notebook Adult nonfiction co-authored with Jack Reeder Shenanoah Heritage: The Story of the People Before the Park Shenandoah Vestiges: What the Mountain People Left Behind Shenandoah Secrets: The Story of the Park's Hidden Past

Timothy Donovan isn't a coward . . . not exactly. But he is prickly, overly defensive, stubborn to a fault, and not precisely certain he really wants to give his life for his country. This is not historical fiction s standard image of the Civil War s loveable fourteen-year-old bugler boy. Carolyn Reeder is braver than her protagonist in taking a stance for the secret doubters who surely peopled the Civil War's battlefields in greater percentages than are ever allowed. In the first part of her Before the Creeks Ran Red trilogy, Reeder sets her young bugler in Charleston Harbor during the months leading to the firing on Fort Sumter and the irrevocable declaration of war between North and South that event precipitates. Along the way she takes on other complex topics: petty feuding between the non-commissioned men; the lack of faith in Sumter's southern-bred, vacillating commandant; near-starvation conditions within the blockaded island fortress. By the time the Stars and Stripes are lowered and Fort Sumter is evacuated, Timothy has done some maturing. But he is still not sure he wants to die for the Union. This is a provocative thought. That the choice might not be his is another one. Reeder's novelette is filled with these classroom discussion bombshells. Kathleen Karr 2007 (orig. 2003), Children's Literature, $6.95. Ages 10 up. --Children's Literature