Anne Hutchinson's Way - Jeannine Atkins

Illustrator: Michael Dooling
Published: 2007
Rating: 4
For: Gr. 3-6
$17.00
Endpapers: Crimson

Magnificent full page oil paintings. Text usually on the sky or the ground. Lovely to look at.

I'm so glad that this story is told, but it seems just a little bit awkward at first. The story seems to begin with Anne's point of view, but then switches to Susanna's, the youngest of her many, many children. But once the point of view becomes clear, the story flows very nicely.

Anne Hutchinson and her husband arrive with their ten or eleven or twelve children in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634. Anne helps birth babies, raise her children, keep her household, and also reads scripture and "talks" with the women - and some of the men- of the community, to the disdain of Gov. Winthrop. This is not a woman's place! Within three years she is tried and told to leave. So she, with her entire family, move to an island in Narragansett Bay -- in Rhode Island.

The afterword tells of what happens to her in the years following; the story is told well and illustrated beautifully.