Print List Price: | $7.99 |
Kindle Price: | $6.99 Save $1.00 (13%) |
Sold by: | Random House LLC Price set by seller. |
Your Memberships & Subscriptions
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
OK
The Storm Before Atlanta Kindle Edition
At a time when most people have grown weary of the war between the states, two young children are desperate to find their way to the battlefields. Jeremy DeGroot wants nothing more than to join a troop as a drummer boy. For Dulcie, a runaway slave, freedom means she must head directly toward the fighting in the hopes that she'll become "contraband," that is, property of the Union troops. Both Jeremy and Dulcie find a place with the 107th New York Volunteer Regiment and even start to forge a friendship. But all that is threatened when they keep crossing paths with the mysterious Charlie, a young Confederate soldier, who may look like the enemy but feels more like a friend.
Young readers who like their fiction filled with exciting historical details, rich characters, and action-packed adventures will be drawn to The Storm Before Atlanta.
- Reading age9 - 12 years
- LanguageEnglish
- Grade level4 - 7
- Lexile measure730L
- PublisherRandom House Books for Young Readers
- Publication dateJuly 23, 2010
- ISBN-13978-0375858666
Customers who bought this item also bought
Editorial Reviews
From School Library Journal
From Booklist
Review
"Richly detailed and well paced, the story provides both well-developed characters and plenty of suspense and gore. For those who like to know the facts behind historical fiction, the author provides historical notes and selected sources. An appealing Civil War title for readers with strong stomachs."
School Library Journal
"This is a fair and informative look at the role of young people in the conflict. The depictions of medicine and nursing are grim and believable, and the cruel treatment of slaves is evident, although graphic descriptions are kept to a minimum."
Library Media Connection
"Schwabach has clearly done her research; her details are rich and she includes historical notes and a bibliography. This would be an excellent classroom supplement to Civil War studies. Recommended."
From the Hardcover edition.
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
But he was stuck being an indentured servant instead. Old Silas was supposed to feed Jeremy, clothe him, and send him to school three months a year in exchange for Jeremy’s labor. By the time Jeremy was ten he was good at making shingles, planting rye and potatoes, and managing the stubbornest oxen in all creation. But he had never had a pair of shoes, he only went to school if Silas could think of absolutely nothing else for him to do, and he got fed so little he had to hide potatoes in the woods where Silas wouldn’t look for them, just to get enough to eat.
And besides that, people in the Northwoods were always talking mean about Jeremy’s pa. It was no kind of life at all, so in 1863 Jeremy gave it up and dusted off on his own hook to Syracuse, where he sold newspapers. He read about the war in the papers and dreamed of how folks back home would sit up and take notice once Jeremy was a hero who’d died for his country.
Problem was, none of the blamed officers would let him join up.
“You’re too young,” said the hundredth recruiting officer Jeremy asked. Or maybe the thousandth.
“Here’s a story about a drummer boy that’s only nine,” said Jeremy, taking it out of his pocket. He’d torn it from an unsold newspaper yesterday.
“Bully for him,” the officer said, not taking the paper. He looked over Jeremy’s head at the next man in line.
There had been patriotic speeches and songs at the meeting, and a regimental band, and now the men were thronging to join up and fight against the Secessionists, those rebels who thought they could just quit the United States of America anytime they wanted.
“I know how to drum, sir,” said Jeremy. He’d found an old tin bucket with the bottom half knocked out, and he practiced on that.
“Come back when you’re eighteen,” said the recruiting officer.
“The war will probably be over by then!”
“I sure hope so.”
Jeremy didn’t.
“Move along, you’re holding up army business,” said the officer.
And at that Jeremy had to step aside and let the man behind him come forward. A grown man with a mustache--Jeremy envied him. He would find a place in the war, all right. Not Jeremy.
Jeremy stomped out of the lecture hall. It wasn’t fair. He knew he was meant to perish on the field of battle, in a blue Union uniform, and show everybody back home how it was done.
He’d already organized his own regiment among the newsboys. They practiced with a discarded drill manual he’d found on the parade grounds. They could march, file left, file right, about-face--they’d gotten so good at it that they sat on the fence by the parade grounds, their bare feet hooked around the wooden rails, watching the real recruits drill and yelling out helpful instructions to them. The recruits never seemed to appreciate this as much as they should have.
But Jeremy seemed doomed to spend the rest of his life selling newspapers on the streets of Syracuse, New York, and reading about other people’s glory.
In fact, it was time to go and pick up the evening papers.
He walked along the Erie Canal, on his way to get the Courier. A gang of canalmen was gathered beside the towpath. One of them was sitting on a barrelhead, twanging out a tune on a cigar-box mandolin, and the others sang:
On Shiloh’s dark and bloody ground
The dead and wounded lay.
Amongst them was a drummer boy
Who beat the drums that day.
A wounded soldier held him up,
His drum was by his side.
He clasped his hands, then raised his eyes
And prayed before he died.
Jeremy stopped and listened, spellbound. He imagined himself at the Battle of Shiloh. He should have been that drummer boy, his shattered drum by his side, one drumstick still held loosely in his pale hand. He imagined lying broken and bleeding in the lap of some faceless soldier, his brave young chest heaving painfully as his lifeblood pulsed out onto his uniform and covered his shiny brass buttons, which would of course have the lyre of the musicians’ corps stamped on them.
“Look down upon the battlefield,
Oh, Thou our Heavenly Friend!
Have mercy on our sinful souls!”
The soldiers cried, “Amen!”
For gathered round a little group,
Each brave man knelt and cried.
They listened to the drummer boy
Who prayed before he died.
Yes, that was how it would be--they would all gather around Jeremy, his comrades, the men whom his courage had inspired in life--they would be there to watch his brave, brave passing. Probably they would beg God to save their valiant young comrade. . . . But alas. To no avail. Tears came to Jeremy’s eyes.
“Oh, Mother,” said the dying boy,
“Look down from Heaven on me,
Receive me to thy fond embrace--
Oh, take me home to thee.
I’ve loved my country as my God;
To serve them both I’ve tried.”
He smiled, shook hands--death seized the boy
Who prayed before he died.
Jeremy’s mother, too, was in heaven (as far as he knew), and that proved that his fate was meant to be the same as the noble drummer boy of Shiloh, who had loved his country so very, very much and gladly died for it--
Product details
- ASIN : B003WUYPHY
- Publisher : Random House Books for Young Readers (July 23, 2010)
- Publication date : July 23, 2010
- Language : English
- File size : 633 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 322 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,026,190 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
We're also introduced to to two other key characters, whose lives will become intertwined with Jeremy's: Dulcie, a spunky and very bright slave girl who runs away from her cruel mistress to find the Union Army, and eventually becomes a medic for a Union field doctor, and a friendly young Confederate soldier, Charlie Jackson, just a bit older than Jeremy, who's looking to trade for coffee or anything else.
War isn't as black and white as Jeremy had imagined back home. Jeremy knows that Charlie shouldn't really be his friend, but he's hungry for company his own age. And Charlie, on the Confederate side, wonders why he's fighting a war started by a bunch of rich men who "Told us we had to stand by the South. Then they went home to their families, to watch their slaves makin' money for 'em." And both sides learn that war is more about rain and mud and staying alive than glory and being a hero.
Schwabach creates sympathetic characters in her three young protagonists, as well as a very convincing sense of place. The reader feels right there in the middle of the action, as 98,000 Union soldiers march into Georgia complete with hundreds of wagons, cattle to be butchered, ambulances, servants, contraband slaves, and even some dogs and a pet pig. We experience along with Jeremy and Dulcie the chaos, blood, and horrors of the battlefield and its aftermath. There's plenty of action, drama, and even a surprise ending (no spoilers here!) as Jeremy and his comrades in the First Division march closer to Atlanta.
The author includes a brief historical note with additional background information about the characters, many of whom were real people, and a bibliography of selected sources.
Jeremy wants to be like the hero in a song he has heard, about a boy who dies in battle and everyone surrounds him with prayers and tears. He wants to be like him, whether he dies or not! So, young as he is, he signs up as a drummer boy. Then he finds out what REAL war is.
Meanwhile, Dulcie, a slave girl who has run away, helps a doctor out on the field as a medic. Her life entertwines with Jeremy's; her wisdom counteracts his innocence.
This story is different than most war stories; it reveals several shocking discoveries about Jeremy's messmates and the "enemy" boy he has befriended.
The author writes this book in more of an informal way, which keeps it moving well. It is clean; there are very few swear words--other than "Hell-Hole," used several times--and definitely no "hell" or "damn" as most war stories use. Everything seems factually correct.
You will enjoy this story, and find it very interesting!
But every time he tries to join the army to be a drummer boy so that he can achieve his dream of heroic death, he is told eleven is too young. Finally, he decides to leave New York, head south and try again. This time, he succeeds in joining New York's 107th. When he finally achieves his dream, he learns that battle was not what he dreamed it to be.
He befriends a young runaway slave who has also joined New York's 107th as a medic. Dulcie's outlook on the war is very different from Jeremy's. Also eleven, she has "seen the elephant," a thing which Jeremy longs for. Highly intelligent, Dulcie understands the horrors of war, as well as the horrors of slavery, and longs to see the end of both.
Jeremy also makes friends with a young Confederate, Charlie. Charlie is two or three years older, but is always friendly to Jeremy. Jeremy learns a lot about slavery and the South from him, but Charlie as a larger secret...