While Esther Forbes was primarily a writer of adult historical fiction, her two attempts at writing for children. Johnny Tremain (1943) and America's Paul Revere (1948), have won universal critical acclaim and clearly established her as a respected writer for children.

Forbes was well qualified, both by vocation and avocation, to write about the history of her beloved New England. The child of an established and respected New England family (her father was William Trowbridge Forbes, a well-known judge), Forbes grew up learning about the legends and history of that region. As a child she spent hours delving through family manuscripts and reading books of a bygone era. This love of the past, later reflected in her many books, was certainly due in part to the interest of her mother, Harriene Merrifield Forbes, in similar subjects. Her mother, a respected researcher in her own right, was the author of Gravestones...