AND THEN WHAT HAPPENED, PAUL REVERE?

Paul Revere was a busy man. He whittled false teeth out of hippopotamus tusk, "always remembered to put the spouts on his teacups and the handles on his cups," rang the bells in Christ Church to make extra money, wrote in his Day Books and "kept putting up new chairs at his kitchen table" to accommodate his exploding family. And after the Boston Tea Party Paul was ready to ride 63 miles a day to spread the tidings to New York and Philadelphia ("This was not swatting flies!"). Still his great feat had its anticlimactic moments — when he was relieved of his mount by some British soldiers "Paul Revere felt bad, of course, to be on his Big Ride without a horse," and when the historic first shots were fired Paul had no time to notice because at just that moment he was carrying John Hancock's heavy trunk out of the Lexington Tavern. After the War "some things went well. . . . Some things went poorly — the same as always," but there's no letdown for the reader in this jaunty view of a hustling Patriot. And Margot Tomes' cheerful, resolute little Colonials are always good news.