Karen's Reviews > The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg

Twelve-year-old Homer P. Figg and his older brother Harold live in Pine Swamp, Maine with their uncle, “the meanest man in the entire state of Maine.” The U.S. Civil War intrudes on their lives when Harold is illegally sold into the Union Army. Bereft, Homer runs away to find his brother, experiencing many outlandish adventures on the way and finally ending up smack dab in middle of the Battle of Gettysburg. Homer is a delightful, spunky boy who tells his story with both humor and pathos in a wonderfully authentic dialect.

I really enjoyed this book (which reminded me in many ways of Elijah Of Buxton), and I can certainly see why it won a Newbery Honor award. Although historical fiction is often a hard sell to middle school students who tend to see it as dry and boring, Homer Figg’s story is anything but. There are a host of eccentric characters and weird situations, all woven together in a funny, suspenseful and historically accurate way. The writing style is wonderful and will keep students’ interest.

Since part of the plot involves a runaway hot-air balloon being used by the Union Army to gather information on the Confederate Army, a good non-fiction book to recommend as a companion to this book might be Lincoln's Flying Spies: Thaddeus Lowe and the Civil War Balloon Corps.

My one minor complaint is the placement of background information (“Some Additional Civil War Facts, Opinions, Slang and Definitions to be Argued, Debated and Cogitated Upon”) at the end of the book, with absolutely no reference to it at the beginning of the book. This all-too-common practice in historical fiction is a pet peeve of mine. It would be so much more helpful for students to read the background information before they read the book – but how can they when the material is essentially hidden at the very end of the book??