Booktalking Colorado - Full Booktalk Record

Booktalking Colorado Full Record:

	Title:	Year of the Hangman
	Author:	Blackwood, Gary
	Date Published:	2002
	Genre:	Real Life
	Grade Level:	7 - 10
	Booktalker:	Sam Marsh

Booktalk:
Shanghaied!! And by my own mother!! I couldn't believe it. Yeah, I'm not much for rules, and I like to stay out late at night. Its just that ever since my dad was killed in the colonies, I've just felt...different. Most of my education has been in coffeehouses and taverns, mixing with the younger sons of wealthy fathers. Our profession was drinking, smoking and playing cards. Yeah, I've lost my share of card games. But I've always made good on my debts...sometimes by 'borrowing' some jewelry or something from my mother's stash and selling it. She tried to make me into a gentleman, but that meant a good deal of study which definitely did not appeal to me. My mother had tried to keep me from my evening forays, but I always figured a way out. So, now, apparently, she had given up trying to raise me herself and had me kidnapped, shanghaied, and sent off to the colonies for my uncle Hugh in the South Carolina Colony statehouse to "straighten me out." Hopefully, I can make him so frustrated, he'll send me right back, I figured. But, when I arrived, he had been reassigned to the Florida Colony, being in the military. No sooner had I arrived in Charles Town, then we reboarded the ship bound for the wilds of Florida, a large sweltering swamp filled with alligators, mosquitoes, disease, Indians and man-swallowing sand bogs. Then, things really took a turn for the worse. The year was 1777, the rebels had been defeated the previous year, and General Washington had been captured. But, the rebels were still rebelling. On the way to Florida, our ship was taken by a pirate ship manned by rebels from the colonies, under the command of one Benedict Arnold, general of the Continental Army.