One if by Land

A A Massachusetts Number Book written by Heidi E.Y. Stemple and illustrated by Jeannie Brett.

• I like this book because it was offered to me by a Japanese friend of mine living in Boston,

Acorn Street, in Beacon Hill

from wikimedia

• because of the cover, which represents a man dressed in an simple old-fashioned way with a candle-lantern in hand, hurrying home at night, and making history come true,
• I like it as well because it’s a number book and I’m very fond of that kind of books which are a mixture of images and mathematics,
• I like it because it speaks about the history of Massachusetts, a state which I find un-American, very British (by the way, it’s north of New York City),
• I like the unusual « format » : in landscape mode instead of the usual portrait mode,
• and I like it, above all, because I don’t need to put my glasses on in order to read it...

A Massachusetts number book

the title ? it reminds me of
"one if by land, and two if by sea"... : the words used by H.W. Longfellow in his poem Paul Revere’s Ride, to describe the signal used to guide his midnight ride at the start of the Revolutionary War.
Revere had ordered two lanterns to be placed in a Boston church tower to warn his confederates that the British were on the move.

1 rock where the Mayflower landed in 1620

2 black bears : couples living in the western wild part of the state

3 abolitionists who fought against slavery during the Civil War

4 baskets like Russian dolls, made in the Indian way on lighthouse ships whose job was to prevent ships from sanding, in the bay of Nantucket

5 basketball players, for the teacher who invented basketball

6 dollar bills for the special paper made of cotton and linen fibers in famous mills

7 chickadees, the "cute" state birds

8 bulldozers for an underground expressway to try and solve the problems of trafic jam

9 Boston Red Sox who in 2004 became the World Champion of baseball

10 yankee candles with delicious flavours

11 wild turkeys for thanksgiving : the Pilgrims were taught corn-raising

12 prehistoric footprints of dinosaurs dating back to 200 million years ago

20 women protesters who striked against conditions of work in industry

nearly 30 miles for the Boston Marathon since 1897, and its first woman jogger

40 clams (shells) for a big pot of clam chowder

50 children’s books : the city for editing children’s books

60 lighthouses : dangerous capes and points

70 snowflakes at wintertime but also dangerous snowstorms and blizzards

80 sugar candy hearts : 1847, the first candy machine for Vanlentine’s Day

90 seed for Johnny Appleseed, the folk heroe John Chapman born in 1774, who planted appletrees in Indiana

100 red brick monuments and their walking tour through the city : the freedom trail.

Even though the links between numbers and the stories are often far-fetched, I enjoyed this touristic and historic trip through the state of Massachusetts, the casual way of learning facts ;

and maybe it’s what I do expect from a book, to remain unsatisfied until I’ve written another new book out of it, my own book, and this one will be with dates instead of numbers... and will be illustrated by somebody else.

PS. For the addicts of the CBS Jericho drama...