A collection of stories from impactful moments throughout history told by young people. Kids will be able to relate and see that young people can make a difference.

This book included many old pictures that are very neat and will gain the attention of the class. It also tells a lot of true and interesting stories about people who have contributed to America and what they have done! This book would be good for students to use as a resource when picking famous people to present on. Each student or group of students will have their own person and using ideas and pictures from this book they could make a really neat presentation! It is a great learning tool for students of many ages and can be a very helpful resource. ( )

I picked up this book, because I loved Philip Hooses' book on Claudette Colvin, and wanted to know more about his research on young people in history. This book is equally as insightful and well written as Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, but carries the breadth of centuries of history.

This book is organized chronologically with chapters dividing up major periods in history with catchy titles like, "Strangers in Paradise: The British Colonies" and "Elbow Room The West." These chapters span U.S. history from colonization to the late 20th century. In each section there are several short biographies (1 to 3 pages in length) about a young person who played an important role in the part of history. Each biography includes supporting information such as sidebars, photographs, diagrams and maps to help the reader better understand the person and the time period. While this book covers such a wide stretch of time, it would be possible for the reader to understand the stories without much previous knowledge of the time periods of events mentioned. And yet, Hoose is also able to provide this information in such a concise way, while still focusing on the individual stories!
Many of the people featured I had never heard of before. This clearly illustrates the title: We were there too! as history has ignored youth's contributions.
One of my favorite biographies was the true story of Pochahontas, which I did not previously know! I would definitely share this with high schoolers to talk about history and how it is distorted for other purposes.
Additionally, I would use this book to provide engaging stories for students when covering any topic from US history. These stories accomplish a lot: they make history relatable, they are engaging, they show that young people make a difference and they teach kids something they will probably never learn in another class.

A wonderful book! ( )

“We Were There, Too!” is a unique kind of work, at least different from anything I have seen so far. In it, Phillip Hoose tells specific stories of young people in American History. Undoubtedly, young people have played a role in our history, and this book explores that. The stories in this book are organized chronologically. It is divided into different eras, such as Columbus’s voyage, the colonial period, the American Revolution, and so on. The last story in the book takes place in the 1990’s. Within each era, Hoose tells several stories of children and young who made important contributions. For example, we learn about a boy who was part of Columbus’s crew and a young woman who was critical to the women’s suffrage movement. The stories themselves are usually interesting and occasionally inspiring.

The language of this book is easy to read and accessible to middle school ages and above. For the most part, the format is appealing. Though this is a lengthy 250 page book, the stories themselves are short and easy to read. The book features illustrations and photographs that complement the stories. I would not expect a young reader to enjoy this book straight through, cover to cover. The book is organized in a way that a reader could reference the specific era in which she were interested. On nearly every page, there are information boxes that are connected to the main text, and sometimes the connection is looser than others. This can be seen as a desirable feature, as they are informative. However, they do tend to clutter up the page and do not always contribute directly to the story being told. The stories themselves are informative offer insight into the eras in which they are set. While young readers may be interested in reading stories of people near their own age, it is not a deep source of historical information. ( )