One Dead Spy

July 1, 2012
Nathan Hale, the famous spy of the American Revolution, tells his own story in this graphic-novel treatment of history. The conceit of author Hale's new series of Hazardous Tales is that his narrator has been swallowed by a big book of history prior to being hanged and thus knows the future of the country he helped bring into being. It's a Scheherazade sort of premise, as Hale, convicted of espionage, forestalls death by telling stories from American history. In this volume, he's helped by the hangman in telling the story of the early days of the revolution. He takes readers from his college days at Yale to the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, his joining the 7th Connecticut regiment, the Battle of Bunker Hill and other pivotal scenes in New England and New York City, where Hale works as an "intelligence officer" following the movements of the British troops to help General Washington develop his war strategies. Hale is caught and to be hanged...but not before he has, in this series, tales to tell. As in Big Bad Ironclad, which publishes simultaneously, the backmatter presents biographical sketches of the major players, further commentary on the execution of Nathan Hale, and even a mini-comic on Crispus Attucks of Boston Massacre fame. An innovative approach to history that will have young people reading with pleasure. (Graphic historical fiction. 8-12)

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August 1, 2012
Grades 3-6 The history books tell us that Nathan Hale, Revolutionary War hero, was hanged for spying in 1776. They don't mention that, before he died, he was swallowed by a giant, magical history book, which imbued him with full knowledge of the future and returned him to the gallows so he could recount the story of the war to a British soldier and a slightly dimwitted hangman. Another Nathan Hale, comics author and also illustrator of Rapunzel's Revenge (2008) and Calamity Jack (2010), uses this device to launch a new Revolutionary Warcentric historical series. The tone and humor remind one of Steve Sheinkin's exceedingly clever anti-textbooks (King George: What Was His Problem?, 2008), but, though biographical notes and further readings are included, several relationships, motives, and even Hale's presence at certain events are pure conjecture. So, though this is not ideal for straight facts, there is a great deal of charm, both in the characters and in the cartoonish and evocative panels that crowd the digest-sized pages. This first book in Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales imbues some personality into the history.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)