The Great American Documents: Volume I: 1620-1830

by Ruth Ashby, Ernie Colón (Illustrator)

Overview

In the Great American Documents series, the teacher and graphic-book author Ruth Ashby and the renowned illustrator Ernie Colón tell the story of the United States through the major speeches, laws, proclamations, court decisions, and essays that shaped it.

The Great American Documents: Volume 1 introduces as series narrator none other than Uncle Sam, who walks us through twenty essential documents bookended by the Mayflower Compact in 1620 and the Indian Removal Act in 1830. Each document gets a chapter, in which Uncle Sam explains its key passages, its origins, how it came to be written, and its impact. In the chapter "The Maryland Toleration Act," we learn that this document was one of the first blueprints for modern religious tolerance. "Common Sense" depicts the Boston Tea Party and the British response as the prelude to Paine's stirring pamphlet. And "The Louisiana Purchase" closes with Lewis and Clark setting off to map Jefferson's "empire of liberty."

As Ashby and Colón show, the creation of that empire resulted in immense prosperity but also meant the extension of slavery and the forcible removal of the Native Americans. Their balanced and teachable theme is that these twenty documents reveal our early struggles to live up to the principles of liberty and equality. This graphic primer is an indispensable resource for students and anyone else who wants the facts of American history close at hand.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374534530
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	05/13/2014
Series:	The Great American Documents , #1
Pages:	160
Sales rank:	379,762
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Ruth Ashby is the author of more than thirty books for children and young adults. A former book editor, she teaches English at the Portledge School in Locust Valley, New York.

Ernie Colón is the illustrator of the New York Times bestseller The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation, After 9/11: America's War on Terror (2001— ), Che: A Graphic Biography, and Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography (all published by Hill and Wang). He has worked at Marvel and at DC Comics, where he oversaw the production for Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Blackhawk, and The Flash.

Ruth Ashby and Ernie Colón live in Huntington, New York

Table of Contents

Introduction
The Mayflower Compact
"A Model of Christian Charity"
The Maryland Toleration Act
1705 Virginia Slave Codes
The Albany Plan of Union
The Virginia Resolves
Common Sense
The Declaration of Independence
The Crisis
The Constitution
The Federalist Papers
The Bill of Rights
Washington's Farewell Address
Jefferson's First Inaugural Address
Marbury v. Madison
The Louisiana Purchase
The Star-Spangled Banner "
The Missouri Compromise
The Monroe Doctrine
The Indian Removal Act

Afterword: Looking Back and Looking Ahead
Suggested Reading
Suggested Websites and Multimedia
A Note about the Narrator
Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

★ 05/19/2014
Comics great Colón, who in the last decade tackled Anne Frank and 9/11 in graphic novels, teams up with women’s and minority history scholar Ashby (Her Story: Women Who Changed the World, Rosa Parks: Freedom Rider) to produce an educational graphic novel. The authors use personal stories of historic figures such as black plantation owner Anthony Johnson, Franco-Indian War Gen. Half King, and Anne Hutchinson, a leader in the fight for religious tolerance, to bring an honest, identifiable realism to the historical documents that they cover here. Using notable treatises, pamphlets, laws, proclamations, and other documents, the book—which begins with the Mayflower Compact and ends with the Monroe Doctrine and the Indian Removal Act—weaves together nearly two dozen vignettes with clarity and synthesis. Most remarkably, it covers the culture and context of each time period with a balanced truthfulness. Colon’s grayscale artwork is straightforward, but historical figures are instantly recognizable, and the authors strive for a balance of genders and ethnicities that will keep a range of readers interested. For those who aren’t just curious about history but who really want to understand it, this is an exemplary volume. (May)

Publishers Weekly

Colón's illustrations help greatly in clarifying concepts and adding dashes of drama and humor . . . An effective and engaging introduction to some of the key documents that shaped our nation.” —Library Journal

“The cartoon approach helps refresh history and make it come alive. A good primer for students and a refresher course for their parents.” —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2014-03-12
An illustrated history of the early United States, narrated by Uncle Sam. As the straightforward title suggests, there is nothing artistically radical or subversive here, just a straightforward account of the development of the United States, from the landing of the Pilgrims through the establishment of the colonies and to the issues of states' rights and slavery that would split the nation in the Civil War (where Volume 2 will resume the narrative). The decision by children's and young-adult book author Ashby (Young Charles Darwin and the Voyage of the Beagle, 2009) to focus on 20 documents might make the material seem dry, but the panels from Colón (Inner Sanctum: Tales of Horror, Mystery and Suspense, 2011, etc.) highlight how much discussion, debate, argument and even warfare went into each. Ashby also doesn't limit the focus to the greatest hits—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution—but shows the importance of less-familiar writings such as Thomas Paine's Common Sense, "perhaps the most influential publication in American history." Paine's more obscure The American Crisis also receives its due. What the narrative makes plain is how much of what citizens take for granted was initially the source of so much controversy. Early on, "most Americans—even the Founding Fathers—still thought of themselves first and foremost as citizens of their home states, not the United States." Among the colonists, religious freedom and even free speech were contentious issues rather than essential liberties; the decision to declare independence from England was by no means unanimous; and the balance between the state and federal governments remained precarious. The narrative doesn't sugarcoat history, as it shows how the capitulation on the slavery issue, deemed necessary for these states to be united, made civil war inevitable and how the Indian Removal Act also betrayed the equality that was a founding principle. The cartoon approach helps refresh history and make it come alive. A good primer for students and a refresher course for their parents.

Kirkus Reviews