Summary-John Quincy Adams and his son journey to France to seek France's support for the American Rebels during the Revolution. Their journey is fraught with storms, an angry sea, and other dangers.

Personal Response- I enjoyed the vivid illustration and learning more about that historic voyage. However, I don't think it would be a great choice for young children.

Extensions- Older students could write a journal about a trip they had gone on with a parent. Student's could color and illustrate a map of the journey. ( )

I did not like this book for a few reasons. The first reason I did not like this book is the illustrations throughout the book were extremely dull. Every page of the book has one picture depicting the text on each page and the majority of the pictures all had the same hue of dark blue painted on them to visually show the adventure. For example, the first page showed John Adams and his son looking out toward the sea they were about to embark on and everything in the picture, including their faces, the items being loaded onto the small boat and the sky were all painted in a dull blue color. I also did not like the illustrations because they were never very detailed for pictures that could have been more grandiose to match the scale of the voyage the text told the story. For example, on the page that revealed their ship had been struck by lightning, the crew members, the ship, and the supposedly menacing sky were painted very blurry. These illustrations made visualizing the life-threatening issues the voyage presented very dull to visualize for me and made the story boring. Another reason I disliked this book was for the monotonous placement of the text on the pages of the book. All of the texts in the book were placed at the same level on the page and directly next to each picture in the book in the exact same fashion on each page. For example, the way the text was placed on the page that told about John Adams and his song boarding their ship for the first time was placed in the exact same location on the page that was near the end of the book detailing the characters’ arrival to their final destination. For me, that made the text read more like a textbook than an interactive picture book and added to the boring nature that the illustrations initially created. Overall, the big idea of this book was to tell of the life-threatening voyage John Adams had to embark on to get to France to make war-changing negotiations that potentially altered the history of the world. ( )

This is an exciting story about John Adams and his son and thier scary battle across the Atlantic to allow colonies their freedom. This story brings to life the lives of these two characters as they make their journey through the sea. 5th grade

http://www.stephenkrensky.com/ This site has alot of information about the author. It also has an educators section with information on writing workshops etc.