Anita Silvey Children's Book Expert
Henry Knox Bookseller Soldier Patriot by Anita Silvey and Wendell Minor

illus­trat­ed by Wen­dell Minor
Clar­i­on Books, 2010

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Henry Knox

Bookseller, Soldier, Patriot

A hearty eater, dap­per dress­er, book­seller to Loy­al­ists and Patri­ots alike, and mar­ried into a staunch Loy­al­ist fam­i­ly, Hen­ry Knox may seem an unlike­ly hero. But his fas­ci­na­tion with war­fare and strat­e­gy and his sup­port of the Patri­ot cause pre­pared him to do what no one else thought was pos­si­ble: trans­port heavy artillery from Fort Ticon­dero­ga, up and down snow-cov­ered hills and across frozen lakes, to relieve the siege of Boston. The dra­mat­ic sto­ry of his achieve­ments is all the more sat­is­fy­ing for being absolute­ly true, a lit­tle-known episode in the his­to­ry of the Amer­i­can Revolution.

Reviews

“What a superb, vivid, ren­di­tion of one of the great adven­tures in Amer­i­can his­to­ry.” (David McCul­lough, author of John Adams and 1776)

  “The first half of this ful­ly illus­trat­ed book deft­ly por­trays Knox as a lik­able, opti­mistic youth, while the sec­ond half shows him as a deter­mined 25-year-old offi­cer lead­ing the expe­di­tion that freed Boston in 1776. Quotes from peri­od sources under­score the dif­fi­cul­ties of the jour­ney, while Silvey’s mea­sured text ably tells the tale and puts events in their his­tor­i­cal con­text.” (Book­list, starred review)

  “The author por­trays Hen­ry as an enthu­si­as­tic, approach­able man who loved books, artillery and food; who lost two fin­gers in an acci­dent; who found pos­si­bil­i­ties where oth­ers found prob­lems. Minor’s real­is­tic, stir­ring illus­tra­tions in acrylics on wood pan­els read­i­ly cap­ture the gal­lant spir­it of this man and his times. First-rate. (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)

“I regret not hav­ing this book when my par­ents dragged me through colo­nial forts and hotspots of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion. I would have enjoyed our vaca­tion much more. I prob­a­bly heard then about Hen­ry Knox, “Book­seller, Sol­dier, Patri­ot,” but Sil­vey uses his diary and oth­er pri­ma­ry sources to bring him to life. Some­how, he man­aged to move 59 can­nons from Fort Ticon­dero­ga to Boston in the throes of the New Eng­land win­ter of 1776, caus­ing the British to flee the city. Sil­vey writes authen­ti­cal­ly and with author­i­ty. Minor’s mut­ed acrylic-on-wood-pan­el paint­ings reflect the peri­od per­fect­ly. A splen­did col­lab­o­ra­tion.” (Kathy Engle­hart, Hath­away Brown School in Shak­er Heights, Ohio, The Cleve­land Plain Deal­er)