Books I Have Loved

Title: Johnny Tremain
Author: Esther Forbes
First Read: Stadium Elementary School
When: 1966

When I went to Stadium School in the 1960s, most of the teachers were older. Even the kindergarten teacher was an older woman; I believe Mrs. Marandola might have been the youngest teacher in the school when I had her for fourth grade. However, Mrs. Grady, who was in charge of both the second and the fifth grades, trained student teachers, so in my seven years of elementary school, we had four student teachers.

I have forgotten the second of the two second grade teachers, but I vaguely remember Miss Fisher, who I startled so much by screaming when someone threatened to tear up the construction paper Easter bunny I was making in art class. The second of the teachers we had in fifth grade was Miss Ockelowicz (sp?), who was sweet and pleasant, but I particularly recall the first of the two student teachers that year.

Her name was Miss Greenberg, and she wore her blonde hair in a bouffant hairdo just like on television. She bought smart, fashionable dresses, as close to a miniskirt as schoolteacher dress regulations allowed, and I remember pretty flowered prints and geometrics. I wonder if we scared her at all, her first class, a bunch of kids mostly of Italian descent with names like Lanzi, Maiorano, D'Ambra, Iacobbo, Calabro, D'Agostino, and Campanini, plus a smattering of Callahan, Chatburn, Miller, and Leung, the boys in cotton or corduroy pants and collared shirts and scuffed Oxfords, the girls in dresses or skirts/jumpers with blouses, ankle socks, and strapped shoes (or, like me, in Hush Puppies) with hair held back with headbands or barrettes, or pulled back into a pony tail. Most of us had stay-at-home moms, dads who worked blue collar, and some pesky siblings. (The lucky ones, I knew, also had a dog.)

Soon after Miss Greenberg arrived, she told us she was going to try something different for us after lunch. Predictably, after being free to converse and goof off in the lunchroom for a half hour, we had trouble settling down to the next class. She thought she'd create a settling-down period, as well as expose us to something creative, by reading a book to us.

In our yesterdays, before televisions and radios, it was common for families to sit in the "parlor" after supper and have someone read to them as entertainment. Today we have psychologists and people like Jim Trelease telling parents it's a good thing to read to children, even older children. But in our day, it was chiefly little children who were read to, those who couldn't read for themselves yet, or not yet read well. It brought to mind Mom reciting nursery rhymes or reading from A Child's Garden of Verses or Dr. Seuss or your children's Bible. To us it sounded a little—well, patronizing! We were ten- and eleven-year-olds, and we'd be in sixth grade next year and old enough to graduate elementary school; wasn't reading to us kind of "baby"?

That first day, after lunch, she opened the book, and began.

"On rocky islands gulls woke. time to be about their business. Silently they floated in on the town, but when their icy eyes sighted the first dead fish, first bits of garbage about the ships and wharves, they began to scream and quarrel.
     The cocks in Boston back yards had long before cried the coming of the day. Now the hens were also awake, scratching, clucking, laying eggs.
     Cats in malt houses, granaries, ship holds, mansions, and hovels caught a last mouse, settled down to wash their fur and sleep. Cats did not work by day.
     In stables horses shook their halters and whinnied.
     In barns cows lowed to be milked.
     Boston slowly opened its eyes, stretched, and woke..."

And we awoke to a new world, day by day: Colonial Boston, talented and conceited Johnny Tremain, small but plucky Cilla and her sickly little sister Isannah and older sisters Madge and Dorcas, devout Mr. Latham, brisk and brusque Mrs. Lapham, lazy and oafish Dove and shy Dusty, avaricious and equally conceited Jonathan Lyte, the headstrong and determined Lavinia Lyte, Mrs. Bessie the cook, and the dedicated, full-of-life Rab Silsbee, who works for his Uncle Lorne at the "Boston Observer." We gasped when Johnny "broke the Sabbath" and burned his hand, were sad as he despaired at his handicap until he became an outcast, admired his courage as he learns to ride the beautiful horse Goblin, followed the ins and outs of Boston law and society and listened as the beginning of the Revolutionary War came to life in the story of a boy just a little older than us. I think, until then, we thought the American Revolution had been fought by a "bunch of old guys" (people in their 30s) who were perfect, two-dimensional characters who just existed in history books. We learned from Johnny Tremain that Samuel Adams and Paul Revere were no plaster saints, but people with faults just like ours, that the British weren't all bad guys, but folks who loved horses like Lieutenant Stranger or were flirting noncoms like Sergeant Gale.

Within a few weeks the two copies of Johnny Tremain in the school library were taken out and stayed out. No kid in the class could wait for Miss Greenberg to get to the end. Unable to even get on the waiting list, I pleaded with my mom to get me a copy for Christmas. You can walk into any bookstore today or order off any website that sells books and get a copy of Johnny Tremain, but back then it was out of print. Mom, who was unsuccessful finding a copy of Charlotte Baker's The Green Poodles for me, got someone—the Paperback Book store maybe? Read All? The Outlet Company or Shepards department store?—to order her a copy of a teacher's edition of the book and I had that for years until I finally bought a hardback copy. I still have the map of Boston from that teacher's edition taped in that hardback.

It wasn't until some years later that I actually saw the Disney film of the book, and I was so disappointed. Oh, it tells the story all right, but it's so much the Reader's Digest condensed version that it's colorless (except for the Liberty Tree song, and I like the actor who plays Paul Revere), and some of my favorite characters, like Isannah, Lavinia Lyte, Mrs. Bessie the Lyte cook, Pumpkin the deserter, Lieutenant Stranger, and Lydia, the African-American washerwoman at the Afric Queen who saves Goblin from being commandeered by the army (she is one of the first positive African-American characters I remember reading about) are missing. Film Cilla is amazingly buxom; she's supposed to be a skinny 13-year-old with a sharp tongue and a thirst for reading. Film Johnny is dark-haired, not blond. Film Goblin was black, the book horse was a magical creature, "a tall, slender horse, so pale he was almost white, but flecked all over with tiny brown marks. The mane and tail were a rich, blackish mahogany. His eyes were glassy blue." (And he was a Narragansett horse! From Rhode Island!) {SPOILER} Plus it's missing the sequence that gives the novel its punch, and even as fifth graders we knew it had to happen even if we were sorry that it did: Rab dies after the battle of Lexington. It was Johnny's final lesson of the story: that freedom is not won lightly, it sometimes takes the lives of those we care about, or of ourselves.

Miss Greenberg finally finished Johnny Tremain. She tried another Revolutionary War book on us, Hay-Foot, Straw-Foot I believe it was called [N.B.: it actually takes place during the French and Indian War], but the spell was over. After Christmas Miss Ockelowicz took her place. In eighth grade, we read Johnny Tremain "for credit" in Miss Wright's English class. We had to do a project of it, with a folder collecting all of our quizzes and tests and exercise papers, and decorate the cover. Of course I drew Johnny on a rearing Goblin, with his post bag slung over his shoulder.

And some time during junior high school I found Miss Greenberg's engagement announcement in the newspaper. It may still be in one of my boxes packed up when we cleaned up the house. I always wonder if she is happy. So if you're out there, Miss No-Longer-Greenberg—thank you. Thank you for Johnny Tremain.