The Ride

Author: Kitty Griffin
Publication Date: 2010
Type of Book: Historical Fiction Picture Book

This historical fiction book tells the story about the legend of Betsy Dowdy. Betsy lived during the time of the Revolution. When word got out that the redcoats were coming to Great Bridge to take supplies, Betsy knew she had to do something. The only person who could stop them was General Skinner and his militia but his camp was very far away. Betsy took the initiative to go tell General Skinner the news herself even though the ride was very treacherous. Once Betsy made it to General Skinner's camp she warned him of the redcoats coming and he prepared to fight. In the end the colonial soldiers won defeating the British troops.

My favorite part of this picture book was the illustrations. The images were drawn in way that resembled water colors. Each page had images that were very bright and colorful. The pictures were very descriptive which is helpful for readers who are struggling with the text. One aspect of the book that made it more challenging was the choice of words. A lot of the vocabulary was specific to the time period and horse back riding. This made it challenging to understand some parts of the text because I didn't know what all of the words meant. Overall I really liked the message behind the story which was, there is always something you can do to help.

I would recommend this story to upper elementary school students. As I previously mentioned some of the vocabulary words were challenging, so younger students wouldn't be able to make sense of the text on their own. Sine there are a lot of tricky words the teacher could write down words that the students didn't know during the read aloud. Then at the end of the story the students could work on figuring out the definitions of the unknown words. The teacher could also use this story to introduce students to legends since it is based on the famous legend of Betsy Dowdy.

Image References
http://www.amazon.com/The-Ride-Legend-Betsy-Dowdy/dp/1416928162