‘Tea Party’ historically accurate book

Now that “Schoolhouse Rock!” is no longer around to whip young children into heady waves of patriotism, nonfiction picture books are doing the job — only far more accurately and without putting songs in your head.

“The Boston Tea Party” is the most recent in Russell Freedman’s Library of American History. In his latest, Freedman homes in on the weeks preceding the taxpayer revolt, with a beat-by-beat recounting of the evening itself, often told through the words of the participants themselves.

The goal here is immediacy, but also historical accuracy, and Freedman, who has also won three Newbery Honors and a National Humanities Medal, impressively achieves both. He neither sugar coats nor cherry picks in describing the events of Dec. 16, 1773. He delivers historical past without ideology or histrionics.

At the same time, Freedman reminds us that 18th-century attitudes can seem jarring today. The Sons of Liberty disguised themselves as Mohawk Indians, and one in the group, 15-year-old Joshua Wyeth, later recalled, “We surely resembled devils from the bottomless pit rather than men.”

But the narrative includes such details that make the events come to life: “Because the water was at low tide — only two or three feet deep along Griffin’s Wharf,” Freedman reminds us, “the tea thrown overboard began to pile up like stacks of hay”; the protesters had to leap into the freezing water with shovels to distribute the contents of the boxes.

Freedman wisely highlights the actions of the Tea Party’s younger participants. We see little Joseph Levering, a schoolboy, holding a whale oil lantern over his father and other men as they apply their war paint.

Though the

“The Boston Tea Party”

By Russell Freedman Illustrated by Peter Malone Holiday House; 40 pages; $17.95. (Ages 7 to 10) proceedings were illegal, as Freedman reminds us, the evening indeed assumed the quality of a sporting event. “Wishing to have my share of the fun, I looked about for the means of disguising myself,” a 19-year-old mason’s apprentice recalled in one of the many examples of Freedman’s strong research. And after the “party” ended, Freedman notes, the protesters “marched smartly away to the melodic squeal of a fife.”

Throughout, Peter Malone’s classic, detailed watercolors illuminate the episode marvelously, as do Freedman’s afterword, bibliography and time line. He includes source notes and an index, unusual in so short a text, but helpful to children learning that real research requires more than a few minutes of Googling. Freedman has clearly and skillfully done his homework and may well inspire young readers to do the same.