R.W. Alley

Starred Review from Kirkus Reviews
Linked by Alley's amiably humorous scenes of a small class, led by a Ms. Frizzle-like teacher, trooping through a reconstructed colonial village and sampling hands-on activities, Katz's poems-some rhymed, some in free verse-open windows on daily life in those olden days. The young visitors reflectively comment on such diverse experiences as dipping candles and walking on cobblestones, playing familiar games ("Rolling hoops and flying kites, / Ice skating, bird-nesting, snowball fights"), sampling unfamiliar dishes ("Hush puppies, brown betty, flummery, crowdy, / Pocket soup, syllabub, apple pandowdy-"), mingling with the dancers at a powwow demonstration, and participating in a traditional Native corn-planting ritual. Sandwiched between maps of the Eastern seaboard that show both indigenous populations and early European settlements, pleasingly varied in tempo and tone, these 20 poems form a hard-to-resist invitation to "taste a spoonful of gooseberry fool, / Hundreds of years away from school." (glossary) (Poetry. 7-10)

Test your knowledge of Colonial History!
Try this QUIZ cleverly put together
by the always clever Susan Katz.

If you need proof of how much things have changed in America in 300 years or
so, see if you can answer the following simple questions:

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1. What do you do with a whimmy diddle?

a. eat it

b. play with it

c. wear it around your neck

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2. Who would be most interested in pickadill?

a. an eight-year-old

b. a blacksmith

c. a woman using a spinning wheel

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3. What would you do if you found a catamount in your yard?

a. pick it and hang it up to dry

b. store it in a safe place

c. shoot it with your flintlock

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4. Where in your house was a spider a necessity in colonial times?

a. the kitchen

b. the garden

c. the barn

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5. You have to eat one of the following colonial dishes at lunchtime today.
Which one will it be?

a. crowdy

b. hush puppies

c. flummery

Answers below.

Here are the answers:

1. B You play with a whimmy diddle; it’s a notched stick with a propeller
blade on the end – when you rub the notches with a second stick, the blade
rotates. You can use it to predict the future by asking yes or no questions
and seeing which way the blade spins (to the right is yes, to the left is
no). This is the colonial era’s version of a Magic 8-ball. :)

2. A Since pickadill is a form of tag played in the snow, it would be of most
interest to an eight-year-old.

3. C A catamount is a wildcat, so shooting it would be your safest option.

4. A A spider was a long-handled frying pan with three legs that you would
have used to cook over the open fireplace in your kitchen.

5. A, B or C depending on your mood.
If you chose crowdy, you’ll be lunching on thick oatmeal.

If you picked hush puppies, you won’t be eating shoes; you’ll be eating
cornmeal balls fried with fish. They got their name because any dogs around
the cooking fire always whined for a taste.

If you selected flummery, you chose berry juice sweetened and then thickened
with cornstarch. (Though my grandmother didn’t call this flummery, she used
to make it for me when I was a little girl, and I highly recommend it.)

*********************

If you weren’t familiar with any of the terminology in this quiz, don’t
feel bad. (Neither was the author of A Revolutionary Field Trip before she

started researching her book.)

If you were able to answer two or more of the questions correctly, you’re
probably a leading light in your local historical society.

If nothing here was new to you, perhaps you should be writing a book of
your own.

For more bits about life in Colonial America visit Susan Katz.

published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2004
8.5 x 11, 37 pages, isbn 0-689-84004-7
all ages