The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg

Philbrick, Rodman. The mostly true adventures of Homer P. Figg. New York: Scholastic, 2009. Print.

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2010 Newbery Honor Book

2010 ALA Notable Children's Book

Annotation: The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg follows a young boy during Civil War America looking for his older brother, who was sold into the Union Army.

Book talk: “They come by the cartload. Moaning soldiers stacked in flatbed wagons or carts drawn by horse or by hand. Mostly the wounded scream only when the cart hits a bump. Some have already stopped screaming and are put aside as the carts are unloaded, their faces covered with a scrap of cloth.

The rest are carried into the barn on litters, awaiting treatment. Dozens and dozens of men, some of them crying out for their mothers, wives, or their sweethearts. The dozens soon become hundred, stacked inside the barn and out, under the shade of the eaves.

“The battle of Gettysburg has begun,” the newspaperman confides.” (p. 172)

Homer Figg is trying desperately to rescue his older brother Harold, who is just seventeen and sold illegally into the Union Army by their mean uncle, Squinton Leach. Along the way, Homer has a rip-roaring adventure not unlike Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.

 

ISBN: 9780439668217

Subject Headings: Adventure and adventures – Juvenile fiction, Orphans – Juvenile fiction, Brothers – Juvenile fiction, United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 – Juvenile fiction