Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales: One Dead Spy

by Nathan Hale

Overview

Nathan Hale, who was an officer and spy for the American rebels during the Revolutionary War, shares his story, from his unlucky days at Yale to his later unlucky days as an officer, with a hangman and British officer.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780606401968
Publication date:	08/01/2012
Series:	The Clone Chronicles Series
Edition description:	Bound for Schools & Libraries ed.
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Nathan Hale is the illustrator of the graphic novel Rapunzel’s Revenge, which was an Al Roker Book Club for Kids selection, an ALA Notable Book, and a YALSA Great Graphic Novel for Teens and earned three starred reviews. He is also the illustrator of several picture books. He lives in Provo, Utah, with his wife and their two children.

Editorial Reviews

According to this version of history, just before Revolutionary War hero Nathan Hale was hanged for spying on the British, a giant American history book swallowed him up and filled him with hundreds of years of future American history. What follows is his narration of historical events for an audience of a foolish hangman and an absent-minded prison guard who promise to delay his hanging as long as he has stories to tell. Told in graphic novel format, these two books allow for a whole series of stories based on great moments in American History. While the first book, One Dead Spy, is about how Nathan Hale finds himself accused of spying and on the gallows (and uttering his famous last words, "I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country."), the second book in the series jumps ahead to the 1800s. In the second story, Big Bad Ironclad, Hale regales the hangman and the prison guard with a tale about ironclad war ships and the Civil War. Albeit a fantasy premise, Hale's hazardous tales are based in fact. The Nathan Hale character tells the stories straight, while the silly hangman and prison guard comment and ask questions adding a lighthearted quality. The self-aware qualities of the book are sure to secure an audience. The way the graphic novel format invigorates American history will appeal to a variety of readers, even those not already committed to graphic novel storytelling. (Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales by Nathan Hale) Reviewer: Jennifer M. Miskec

VOYA - Jennifer M. Miskec

Nathan Hale, the famous spy of the American Revolution, tells his own story in this graphic-novel treatment of history. The conceit of author Hale's new series of Hazardous Tales is that his narrator has been swallowed by a big book of history prior to being hanged and thus knows the future of the country he helped bring into being. It's a Scheherazade sort of premise, as Hale, convicted of espionage, forestalls death by telling stories from American history. In this volume, he's helped by the hangman in telling the story of the early days of the revolution. He takes readers from his college days at Yale to the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, his joining the 7th Connecticut regiment, the Battle of Bunker Hill and other pivotal scenes in New England and New York City, where Hale works as an "intelligence officer" following the movements of the British troops to help General Washington develop his war strategies. Hale is caught and to be hanged…but not before he has, in this series, tales to tell. As in Big Bad Ironclad, which publishes simultaneously, the backmatter presents biographical sketches of the major players, further commentary on the execution of Nathan Hale, and even a mini-comic on Crispus Attucks of Boston Massacre fame. An innovative approach to history that will have young people reading with pleasure. (Graphic historical fiction. 8-12)

Kirkus Reviews