LONG MAY SHE WAVE

A teenage girl spangles the U.S. flag with stars—and spawns our national anthem.

It’s 1813; America has been fighting the British for a year. Thirteen-year-old Caroline Pickersgill is from an illustrious, white, flag-making family in Baltimore. When the U.S. Army commissions them to fashion a flag to fly over nearby Fort McHenry, Caroline and other skilled seamstresses—including Grace Wisher, a young African-American indentured servant—toil for weeks. The gigantic banner proudly waves for a year until the enemy sails toward the fort. The ensuing battle tests the flag’s, its creators’, and, of course, the new nation’s mettle. As history tells, America emerged victorious, and the flag survived, inspiring Francis Scott Key to write an awestruck poem, the first stanza of which became our national anthem (and all of which is reproduced in the backmatter). The simple, straightforward narrative incorporates snippets of the song in the book’s second half, but the stirring words fare better as lyrics than in story form. The informative author’s note is actually more inspiring than the text. Most illustrations evoke more excitement: bold reds and blues are eye-popping, and battle scenes are rousing and dramatic. However, the flat, caricatured portraits of human figures, rendered with light-tan skin tones save for Grace’s brown skin, feel at odds with the historical context.

Interesting and well meaning—but doesn’t make it to the top of the flagpole.