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Denenberg, Barry. The Journal of William Thomas Emerson : A Revolutionary War Patriot. Scholastic, 1998. Reviewed by Colin C., Conant Elementary School.
William Thomas Emerson was an orphan child in the mid 1770's. William was an orphan ever since an extremely dreadful thunderstorm when he was about ten and a half years old. William was sound asleep in his trundle bed when an enormous lightning bolt struck the cobblestone drive on which his small home resided. The effect of the lighting bolt's brightness shocked William's mother, father, and sister to death. The amount of electricity in the air at the time, was said to melt the plates right into the table!
After William's family's death, William was sent to a farm where they would feed him and give him shelter if he helped out around the farm. Well, "helping out around the farm" became hard labor working for the farm owner. After he had had enough with the beating, starving and labor the farm owner had given him, William made the decision to run away that night.
To find out more about William Thomas Emerson, his fiend Henry Moody, a publisher's apprentice, and life just as it was before the American Revolution, read The Journal of William Thomas Emerson, part of the My Name is America series.