Bull Run

by Paul Fleischman

A Civil War drama told in sixteen voices, this ‘is a heartbreaking and remarkably vivid portrait of a war that remains our nation’s bloodiest conflict.… Fleischman’s artistry is nothing short of astounding.’ —Publishers Weekly. ‘Fleischman has done what he does best—create a unique piece of fiction with echoes of his poetry throughout.’ —H. ‘Outstanding… unforgettable as historical fiction… an important book for every library.’ —SLJ. Notable Children's Books of 1994 (ALA)
1994 Best Books for Young Adults (ALA)
1994 Fanfare Honor List (The Horn Book)
Best Books of 1993 (SLJ)
1993 Books for Youth Editors' Choices (BL)

1994 Teachers' Choices (IRA)
Notable 1994 Childrens' Trade Books in Social Studies (NCSS/CBC)
1994 Notable Trade Books in the Language Arts (NCTE)
1994 Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction for Children
1993 The Year's Best Books (Publishers Weekly)
Children's Books of 1993 (Library of Congress)
1994 Books for the Teen Age (NY Public Library)
100 Books for Reading and Sharing 1994 (NY Public Library)

1994 Silver Medal for Literature (Commonwealth Club of California)
1994 Anne Izard Storytellers' Choice Award Winner (Westchester, NY Library System)

Genres: Historical Fiction, Civil War, Young Adult, War, Fiction, Historical, Childrens

112 pages, Hardcover

First published March 20, 1993

About the author

Paul Fleischman grew up in Santa Monica, California. The son of well-known children's novelist Sid Fleischman, Paul was in the unique position of having his famous father's books read out loud to him by the author as they were being written. This experience continued throughout his childhood.
Paul followed in his father's footsteps as an author of books for young readers, and in 1982 he released the book "Graven Images", which was awarded a Newbery Honor citation.
In 1988, Paul Fleischman came out with "Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices", an unusually unique collection of poetry from the perspective of insects. This book was awarded the 1989 John Newbery Medal. Factoring in Sid Fleischman's win of the John Newbery Medal in 1987 for his book "The Whipping Boy", Paul and Sid Fleischman became to this day the only father and son authors to both win the John Newbery Medal.

Reviews

[Maya · Rating 1 out of 5]

Okay, this is partly the fault of Paul Fleischman and partly the fault of my teacher. I had this book as a summer reading assignment and it reads like it's written for much younger readers. The characters have no personality, and are all annoying. And there are too many of them. I think the ones that annoyed me most were Shem Suggs not only because of his weird name, but because of his weird obsession with horses. I have a bestie who is obsessed with horses, and its not annoying at all. But this guy? Obsessed to the point of being unhealthy. Somebody pointed a gun at his horse and he "shot him without thinking". I half hoped his horse would die. I know, cold. But it was the author's fault for not developing the character enough so that I cared what happened to him and his stupid horse. (I know this may be surprising, but I actually do like horses quite a bit. I just wouldn't die for them.) Another annoying person always that naiëve eleven year old boy who wanted to fight and kill. Just another year, buddy, and you could volunteer for the Hunger Games!! Also, that cab driver's constant 'Tis a fact'ing was super annoying. I'm not sure what messages this books is trying to send, but people, in my own words, war is bad. Okay? It just is. And this book sucks. It was a wasted two hours. Why could I not have been assigned a better book? A classic, maybe, if it had to be educational. Then I could have added that classic to my repertoire. But this book sure ain't a classic, and it sure ain't going going on my repertoire.

[Mrs. Van · Rating 4 out of 5]

Common Core Reading Standard 5.RL. 6 states "Describe how a narrator's or speaker's point of view influences how events are described. Paul Fleishman's book provides a perfect opportunity to address this standard. This historical fiction novel presents narratives based on the experiences of the civil war representing sixteen different viewpoints. Stories are told from the points of view of males and females, northerners and southerners, blacks and whites, and youths and adults. Students can explore their experiences and feelings about the war through an individual reading or through a reader's theater experience.
Fleischman's characters are everyday folks who are brothers, sisters, fife players, illustrators, and generals. Their stories provide the human narrative to support what students have read in their textbook. Fleischman offers suggestions regarding its use in reader's theater. This text is perfect for teaching point of view as well as inferences. This provides an opportunity for students to infer reasons for the feelings and actions of the many narrators.
I used this text in a unit to support my fifth graders' work in social studies. After their reader's theater presentations, we made a chart detailing information about each of the narrators including age, race, gender, occupation, and feelings about the war. We often had to infer their age or their feelings about the war based on their actions in the text. It makes a perfect compliment to other historical fiction accounts and nonfiction accounts of the civil war.

[Jamey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good book, but I didn't like how are the characters where scramble together. In the back of the book, in the notes section, it gives the list of names of each character and it gives what pages they are on. This was a nonfiction book. It had a lot happen in this book even though it was small. It may have been hard to follow, but once you figure out who that person was than it was good. It was a battle in the Civil War, and sadly before I picked up this book I had no idea that Bull Run was even a battle or that it was during the Civil War. I may have not been told of this in class or I was didn't listen all that well. One part during this book that made me so upset was when this person who loved horses saw the battle field that was filled with dead horse. This person went out and made graves for the horses. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes real and exciting stories that takes a moment to get use to.

[Lizzette · Rating 1 out of 5]

this book is o.k, it tells you different characters perspectives, but it's really boring. I would recommend this to anyone who doesn't get bored easily.

[Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading this book, and Seedfolks, I find myself really enjoying stories told from multiple perspectives. I think this will be a useful book for my Humanities unit.

[Nelda Zamir · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book. It's written at a reading level for upper elementary students, but I think anyone would find it interesting. What it's NOT is some type of novel telling the intense story of a single person during the Battle of Bull Run. What it's NOT is an in-depth explanation of the Civil War. It really requires that a reader either know some background information about the Civil War and this battle. On the other hand, it would make a wonderful accompaniment to a study of the Civil War-an excellent classroom or home study tool to provide multiple perspective on the Civil War.
What it IS is a collection of short passages telling the thoughts, experiences, and feelings of sixteen different people involved with the battle in some way: eight Southern characters and eight Northern characters. It includes the thoughts of military leaders, regular soldiers, women, a doctor, slaves, a young fife-playing boy, etc. It provides perspective on the battle from all these viewpoints. It gives a rather unbiased viewpoint of the battle, as one looks at it from the experiences of all these different people. No character has more than six entries. It provides a broad perspective rather than a deep one. This would make a great Reader's Theater for a classroom studying the Civil War. While it's written at a simple level, I still found this short book a powerful read for myself, and I learned some things I didn't know about the Battle of Bull Run.

[Allie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not sure how young adult this is. 8th grade maybe high school. It is well written and shows the horrors of war

[Bo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting method of relating the account of the battle of Bull Run - with various short accounts from a variety of perspectives. Many of the individuals have multiple "speeches." The book could also be used to do a "readers' theater."

From my limited knowledge, I believe the book to be historically accurate. However, I didn't appreciate the bad language, and additionally, thought the book was too graphic in describing some of the injuries and behaviour in the war. Thus, I felt it was inappropriate for the intended age group of the readers.

2 1/2 stars

[Claire Wood · Rating 1 out of 5]

Exceptionally convoluted and confusing

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is written from the perspective of narratives of people who were involved in the battle. I found it interesting to view the times and the battle from different perspectives. Even though I was already familiar with the events before and after the battle the personal accounts gave new insights.

[Caleb Christensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book. It was different because there was around 19 different characters in the book and they all have different perspectives on the civil war. I think the purpose of this book was to inform us of what all the people thought of the war because I couldn’t really pick out a theme because there were so many varying perspectives in the book. Overall it was very interesting the hear the perspectives of a General in the North and a wife in the south and I would definitely recommend it to people.

[Sam B · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bull Run is a historical fiction novel that uses different point of views of characters to tell a story. This is a very creative way to tell a story, however, the book can be very annoying and frustrating to read because the reader keeps jumping around from character to character. I found it hard to read this book because the reader often forgets about a character and is forced to go back and read about that character again and again. This book is also very short and doesn't really satisfy the reader. The book for me took about an hour and a half to read because it is so short and I was very bored while reading this book. I would recommend this book If you are looking for a quick read about history.

[Amber M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Genre: Historical Fiction
Awards: Scott O'Dell Award
Grade Level: 5-6

Bull Run would be a wonderful book to read to the students while studying about the Civil War. This book is told through 16 different characters. Different personalities and positions offer students a variety of characters with whom they can identify. For a follow up activity I would ask the students “How did reading different accounts help us to understand the war?” I would have them write a short essay for this question.

[Julie Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two reviews in one:

Bull Run was in our HS library and hadn't been borrowed once. I thought perhaps it was because it was more appropriate for a middle school audience, and I brought it down to the MS library. No interest. Eventually, the book was weeded. A 7th grade Social Studies teacher added it to his classroom library. He provides extra credit to students who read historical fiction, and he provides a "free read Friday" every other week.

Friday, he gave the book back to me and said it was "the worst book" he's ever read and that it deserves to be discarded. When I asked for more information, as I was surprised that Paul Fleischman could write a horrible book, especially one that received awards, he said "It's a different character every chapter, and they never come together!" He seemed to think it was a disjointed mess, and he complained that it was "unnecessarily graphic," and the character who saw someone's intestines in their lap didn't even act appropriately for the scene. I did point out that a civil war book that wasn't graphic would surprise me more. He practically threw the book at me with instructions to remove it from his classroom! So....I had to read it. I was intrigued. I enjoyed Karen Hesse's book, Witness, and Fleischman's Seedfolks which had the same format, and I thought they were done well, so I was eager to see if it's the format or just that it didn't quite work with this one that was the problem.

I don't agree with the teacher's assessment at all! I really enjoyed the book, wasn't confused, and was moved to tears more than once. I learned some facts about the Civil War and how it affected various types of people that I didn't know before (or had forgotten), and I think it was really well done. I guess it's not for everyone, but if you can use the visual clues and recognized the distinctly different voices and clear occupation/position clues of each character, it's pretty understandable. There are many different characters each reacting to or being a part of this first battle of the Civil War and while they don't all end up interacting, the timeline is chronological. For example, one character who is fighting for the Union is retreating, and the next chapter/character is watching the battle as entertainment on a picnic blanket and the retreating union army comes running up the hill at them and you just know that the last character is among the throng. It's like Fleischman trains a camera on like 10 different people throughout the country and checks in on them for a few minutes in a clockwise rotation. I thought it was brilliant, yes graphic (as it should be for the subject matter) and totally appropriate for middle school students learning about the war.

There is a review here on Goodreads by a teacher who had her 5th grade students work to determine each character's gender, age, occupation, and feelings about the war, and that is an excellent use of this book in the classroom as a way to teach reading in the Social Studies content area. She mentioned that Fleischman provides some type of reader's theater activity for teachers as well. I am either going to keep this book for my home collection or re-add it to the MS library. It was a great 2-hour read.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paul Fleischman recreates the first great battle of the Civil War from the points of view of sixteen participants. Northern and Southern from all kinds of places, all of the people involved in this war were different color. White and black, they all came with a unique story from where they came from, looking for hope, faith, and glory. Folly of a nation discovering the true nature of war less. It shows us what people had to face in wars and all the suffering going on with innocent people who had to do a lot of traveling around the world.
This book would be an excellent choice for a student or adult studying about the Civil War and it’s significant meaning. Paul the author, tells us the book in sixteen different characters, it sounds hard to understand and read, but really it takes the readers breath away. There’s all kinds of places, positions, and personalities that all the characters have throughout the book. Multiple perspectives that us the readers have to understand in the book, this makes it hard for us to focus on just one character. A good way to stay in touch with every character is the setting and character groups, or even what is the character going through or saying.
This book will either make you bored and you won’t like it at all or you can emphasize while reading and think of all the different things going around every character. However, the book does have all the names of the characters in the back and the page number, so you can learn a little about the characters. Although, studying all of the characters would be a good idea before starting to read the book to those who got confused throughout the book. I would strongly recommend this book to people learning about the Civil War or even teachers teaching about the Civil War.

[Will King · Rating 5 out of 5]

February, 2017

Bull Run is an interesting book because it has multiple perspectives from both the North and the South. This makes it harder because I can't focus on one character, so I have to focus on the setting or the characters in groups. But, the book report must go on, so here goes nothing. The setting takes place during the beginning of the war, to be more specific, Bull Run. Most of the characters are fighting for the North or South. It starts out by telling them of all their origins and why and how they ended up joining the war. Then, they get set up for Bull Run before starting the battle. It goes on like the history books say and then they tell the conclusions at the end.

The main idea of bill run is that people have different opinions and that is what motivates them to do the stuff the do. Also, another main idea is that war is bad. Lots of people die, people get injured and thousands of people are scared for life from what they saw. But also, back to the first main idea, people talk about why they join the military, what they do that effects their actions. People do crazy stuff for their country and families.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was assigned reading for my son's history lesson. Now granted I had the same complaint many people did. There were a lot of characters in this book that were not fleshed out enough so sometimes it was difficult to differentiate one from the other. However, one character did stand out to my son which was the 11 year old who joined the war. This was an ingenious move on the author's part since the book is designated for about a 10 to 11 year old child. My son could immediately began to relate and empathize with him. That is what overall made the book worthwhile.
It may help when studying/teaching this book to take a moment to identify who the character is and perhaps write a brief bio about them the moment they are introduced. Perhaps gather facts about them as you go. Then the story no doubt will flow a bit better without having to ask yourself, "Okay, who is this again?"

[Valerie McEnroe · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is book is told from many different perspectives: south, north, black, white, soldier, commander, doctor, photographer, seamstress, spectator, and a few others. Each chapter is very short, about a page and a half. Overall it's a quick read. For the most part it's about all the different people who ultimately convened at the Battle of Bull Run. Fleischman had a novel idea to set the story up this way. Usually you just think about the soldiers and officers, but there was so much more to the Civil War. Fleischman tries to make that point, but for most kids, it just ends up being too disjointed. If you don't already understand a lot about the Civil War, it's confusing, and I hate to say, boring.

[Sleo Sleo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every since I was the third grade, I have always been interested in the civil war. In result of that interest, I have read numerous books about the topic, such as The Red Badge of Courage. Now, I'm not saying this book was better than The Red Badge of Courage, but does come pretty close. The book is in the perspective of multiple different people, from a slave to front line soldier. No other book I've read has truly showed me different sorts of perspective as this book has. All of the other books I've read on the Civil War have only been about on singular person, usually it being a soldier. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone willing to learn about different perspectives in a war.

[Shelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yes, there are some good nuggets of info that would be instructive to readers about the CW. I would think, for some MG readers, the changing of perspective would be tough to follow. Thank goodness for each chapter being "woodcut" stamped with an image to help cue you.

I think Soldier's Heart by Gary Paulsen is a better read and we certainly feel more care for Charley as we follow him through the battle at Bull Run.

At the back of the book, it mentions how the book could be used for a Reader's Theater. I think that could be very cool and would support the changing of characters in a more visual way for younger readers.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved how this book had a snapshot feel. It was like looking into lots of different perspectives and pictures surrounding one event: the Battle of Bull Run. The chapters are incredibly short (more like paragraphs) which made the book fast paced. It was very unique in the way that the book did not really have a central "cast of characters" that interacted, but rather individuals with their beliefs and experiences that gave depth to the reality of war and how people were responding from all levels of society.
idea for teachers: could do a jigsaw activity of this by giving students one character to read and then come together for share their story.

[Cognatious Thunk · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a bit of an oddball. The language is simplistic, yet the format, which switches between sixteen characters, is quite complex. Adding to the disorientation, the sixteen distinct characters jammed into a very short book are mere cardboard cut-outs of people, reduced to caricatures through their merely snapshot appearances. Yet the chaotic compression of characters and perspectives highlights the tumultuous bedlam of war, and the novel does a decent job of presenting the diverse viewpoints clashing during the Civil War without reducing them to heroics and villainy. Despite being forced to pick this book apart through L.A. activities as a child, I enjoyed reading it then and now. Fleischman was one of my favorite authors in fourth grade and I still like rereading his books.

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

By the end, I really liked this book for its nonpartisan and unromantic view of the Civil War.

At the beginning, I was confused by so many different characters (and their short chapters), though I appreciated that unlike _Seedfolks_, this book had multiple chapters from many of the characters' perspectives. (I actually liked _Seedfolks_ overall better as a book, but this was a plus to _Bull Run_.) I also didn't find the stories as compelling at the beginning.

If I were teaching a Civil War unit, I'd absolutely use this book.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this aloud to my son ahead of our spring break trip that might take us through Bull Run. I found it to be not very entertaining and difficult to keep track of all the different characters. But it got the point across that the populace of the time didn't take this war very seriously, they thought it was going to be fun and games (one character takes a posh family out for a picnic on a hill to watch the battle), soldiers from both sides thought it would be easy and they'd come back heroes, and they all discovered that war is horrible and there are no winners.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

#ReadKidsLit

2017 Popsugar Reading Challenge: A novel set during wartime
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The concept of this book is fantastic. The history-changing Battle of Bull Run told from multiple perspectives, creating a multi-faceted portrait of a battle in all of its historical and human context. Considering that this book is barely 100+ pages long, there's a lot of depth to this story. It's gripping, it's visceral, and it's tragic (it's amazing the kind of gruesome violence that writers can get away with in a children's book that they can't get away with in a children's movie).

My only complaint is one that a lot of readers seemed to have, that there were A LOT of characters (sixteen of them), and keeping track of them got a little tough sometimes. Each chapter is headed by a woodcut illustration specific to a certain character, which helps to give a visual on which character is currently speaking. There's also a complete cast list in the back of the book. Those two things helped a bit, but not much.

There was also, in my view, a slight shortage of black characters. Again, sixteen characters, and only two were black. Considering the subject matter, this strikes me as a bit of an oversight.

Still though, this was an excellent read that delivers more depth and intrigue in its slim 100 pages than in books twice or three times the size. Maybe this won't offer anything new to a historical fiction buff, but to a layperson like me, this hit the spot.

[Colleen Mertens · Rating 5 out of 5]

My daughter read this for school and made it sound so interesting I had to read it too. I covers the first major land battle of the civil through the eyes of many witness. This book fictionalizes actual historic figures and adds other characters to give an overall viewpoint of how war affects all whether directly or indirectly involved with the fighting. It was a neat way to present history for middle schoolers.

[Karin · Rating 4 out of 5]

My main issue with this book is that each 'chapter' is from a different character's perspective and it can be confusing for the age range this book is geared toward. We had a list of each character & where they were from & my children could jot down notes about them if they chose, to help them remember. Overall though, my children found it interesting.

[James Lopez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book in middle school with my English class (occasionally on tape) and I was hooked. Sixteen different, engaging characters really painted the Civil War environment. It created perfect discussion topics. I highly recommend this book for young readers (though they'll probably want to be at least twelve or thirteen).

[Just a Girl Fighting Censorship · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fleischman does a great job of capturing the essence of a large collection of characters and objectively telling the story of the first battle of the American Civil War. We have a diverse collection of voices, women and men, old and young, black and white, Northern and Southern. He doesn't skimp on the gory details of war, which I think is a good thing, but be warned.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did not like that they kept switching the character. You cannot form a connection with them because of how their chapters are separated throughout the book. Otherwise, they did capture what could have happened with the characters in my opinion. So in a quick summary, the story was good, and the structure less than good.