Drummer Boy of Company C: Coming of Age in the Civil War

Gr 6–9—In a book that is very much a labor of love, the author relates the experience of her grandfather, Almon Beneway, as a drummer boy and prisoner of war in the American Civil War. Beneway enlisted at age 14, beginning as a man-of-all-work, "brushing the lieutenant's uniform and blackening his shoes," before becoming a regimental drummer. Sent home from the front once, he reenlisted against his mother's will. The use of primary-source documents is exemplary, with lengthy quotes from both published first-person recounting as well as her grandfather's unpublished memoir, newspaper accounts, documents from the National Archives Compiled Military Service Records, and a breathtaking, beautifully placed array of photographs and period drawings-portraits, maps, and illustrations. Gray-shaded sidebars give additional information on topics as varied as minie balls, battle organization/chaos, sources, and specific information sources for statements in the text. The text is readable and involving. Given all these strengths, it is a shame that the author felt the need to fictionalize. Information is often relayed in the form of conversations that "might have" or "probably" happened, and frequently these conversations are treated subsequently as fact. These kinds of insertions will make it difficult for readers in the middle school range-to whom this title might well appeal-to discern the difference between fact and fiction. Librarians and teachers, then, should at the very least be aware of this aspect of the text when considering purchase. A lovely, if flawed, work that does not replace such standards as Jim Murphy's The Boys' War (Clarion, 1990).—Ann Welton, Grant Elementary School, Tacoma, WA