From 1950 until her retirement in 1969 she taught in the school system in Cicero, IL--another Chicago suburb. In her position as director of language arts Hunt found that good historical fiction for younger readers, which she felt was an effective teaching tool, was in short supply.
Across Five Aprils, Sadler reveals, was "written to fit the needs of her students."
Across Five Aprils differs from other stories about the Civil War, such as Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, because the action of the war takes place, for the most part, elsewhere. The focus of the story is nine- year-old Jethro Creighton and how he grows and matures while the war goes on. "Jethro experiences the war through his relationships with his parents," writes Sadler: "his sisters, Jenny and Mary; his brothers, John and Bill; and his schoolmaster, Shadrach Yale." He has to learn to accept the fact that his brothers enlist to fight for different sides: John for the Union, Bill for the Confederacy. "The family respects their rights to act on their beliefs," Sadler states, "but because Bill's sympathies are with the Confederacy, the family is labeled 'Copperheads' and slated for retribution." "Once the pampered baby of the family," Patricia L.
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