"The Legend of Bass Reeves" by Gary Paulsen

Funny thing: I thought I had read this book before.  I assigned it to one of my homeschool co-op classes to read for this month, remembering it as an exciting recounting of Bass Reeves's adventures as a U. S. Marshal in the Old West.  I started reading it this week to have it fresh in my mind for our discussion next week... and discovered I had actually only read the last 50 pages or so before.  About half of the book is actually about Bass growing up in slavery in Texas.  Then it explores why he ran off to Indian Territory as a young man, and how he found friendship and belonging there among the Creek tribe.  Only the last third is about his career as a lawman.

The book is fictional in that Paulsen writes about Bass's life as if he was writing a novel, with all kinds of situations and dialog that are supplied by the author.  Historians really know very little about Bass Reeves's early life growing up in Texas, so a lot of that is filled in based on typical conditions and experiences of that time and place.  The subtitle of the book is Being the True and Fictional Account of the Most Valiant Marshal in the West, which gives you an idea of how this is a blend of real and imaginary things.

It's actually a deeper, richer book than I remembered... but also a bit sterner stuff than I would ordinarily have assigned to my 3rd-thru-5th-grade class.  I don't know if the reading level is above them, but there's some content here that I might have shied away from for them, such as a handful of bad words, mentions of torture and massacre (very lightly described, but could be really hard for very sheltered or sensitive kids to read about), and a pretty serious look at life as a slave.  (There's also a whole introduction that I would just advise most kids skip, to be honest.)  It does address the kinds of racism that Bass faced, and did an okay job pointing out that black, white, and native peoples all had different prejudices that worked against their getting along together.  It felt a little heavy-handed with that once or twice, but overall I think it was a really fair and sensible depiction of the era.

Anyway... class time next week could be interesting!  Happily, most of the kids in that class are into books like Goosebumps, so I don't think they'll find it scary.  And none of them are what I would consider quite sheltered.  We shall see how it goes!  I do know one of the nine-year-olds was about half done with it when I bumped into him earlier this week, and when I asked him what he thought of it, he said it was really interesting and not hard to read.  SO... it will probably be fine.  But I have definitely learned my lesson about relying on my memory about books I haven't read/reread within the last few years!

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for the aforementioned scattering of bad language, as well as non-detailed descriptions of torture and massacre (naked dead bodies and scalpings are mentioned, along with vague description of mutilation, such as referring to "people being cut up").  The word 'rape' is used once in the book, but not defined, and the word 'prostitute' is used in the introduction, but not defined. 

Because it turns out I actually hadn't read most of this book before, I am counting it as my first read for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge this year.