Booktalking Colorado - Full Booktalk Record

Booktalking Colorado Full Record:

	Title:	The Star-Spangled Secret
	Author:	Kimball, K.M.
	Date Published:	2001
	Genre:	Historical Fiction
	Grade Level:	4 - 7
	Booktalker:	Susi Bonato

Booktalk:
The letter dangled from her trembling fingers as tears rushed down her cheeks. She couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe through her sobbing. For many grim minutes, life ceased to exist for her. Caroline Dorsey’s only brother, Charlie had drowned. Caroline attended Madam Grelaud’s School for Girls in Philadelphia, and spent eleven months of the year away from her family. Her mother had moved their family to Maryland in 1814 to escape the yellow fever. However, during that time the Dorsey family lost Caroline’s baby sister, Rebecca and her father, so her brother and mother were the only family she had left. Yet when Caroline was able to recover from the initial shock the letter brought her, she believed something was wrong about her brother’s death, mainly that he wasn’t actually dead. The letter stated that he died from falling overboard, but Caroline knew Charlie was a wonderful swimmer and could walk a tree branch as narrow as her wrist. No…she came to the conclusion that he had been….KIDNAPPED!! Caroline is so sure of her conviction that within days she takes a carriage home to her mother and immediately focuses on gathering information about what actually happened to Charlie. First, she commissions one of her mother’s servants to drive her into Baltimore, where she can go to the docks and question sailors that might of know her brother. This in itself proves hair raising when an old sailor nearly accosts her on the dock. Caroline knows she can’t give up in finding Charlie, and she will use any resource available whether it be making a plea to President James Madison or writing letters to the captain of the Liberty-the ship that Charlie sailed on. On top of this there are rumors of an impending British attack on Baltimore everyday. But unbeknownst, to Caroline…there may be an even great peril waiting for her much closer to home.