I'd never heard of the subject of this picture book bio, but he seems like an interesting man. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that this book entirely does him justice. It's somewhat scattered, pulling disparate bits of information together - types of harpoon hooks, for example - and this lack of focus doesn't exactly make for a compelling narrative. Which is a shame, as on bare facts it should be. Attucks, born into slavery and escaping that evil to work for two decades on a whaling ship, is killed in the Boston Massacre, one of the inciting events of the American Revolutionary War. Granted, I don't know much about that war either, living on the other side of the world as I do, but really this could have used a longer conclusion and some more in-depth questions. I know that young children are the target audience here, but still: how did Attucks feel about fighting for the right to freedom for people who would deny him his? He had to go by different names for years to prevent him being dragged back to slavery in chains. I mean yes, he clearly valued freedom enormously, but a lot of his fighting was on behalf of people who didn't... or at least they didn't value it for him. There's no real exploration of this, nor is there any indication of what happened after his murder, and that those soldiers who killed him were put on trial and largely acquitted.

It's mostly bare facts without a whole lot of context, is what I'm saying. I wonder if there's a bio for adults out there on Attucks though, because I'd be interested in reading it.