Who is watie in rifles for watie

Published September 25th by HarperTeen first published More Details Original Title. Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Rifles for Watie , please sign up. Does this story have a happy ending?

Nathan Josiah Yara Yes, it does have a happy ending but it leaves a bit of uncertainty. See 1 question about Rifles for Watie…. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. Sort order. Start your review of Rifles for Watie. Jun 05, Joan rated it really liked it. Why did I ever read anything out of a text book about the civil war?

Rifles for Watie taught me more about the civil war than any junior high American History book I ever endured. It was exciting and not biased. The author did a remarkable job of showing the good and bad sides of both the Union and Confederate Armies. The protagonist Jeff Bussey w Q. The protagonist Jeff Bussey was a fun hero. His character progression touches the heart of every reader. We applauded him when he chooses the higher road.

We hold our breath as he survives one narrow escape after another. I would recommend this book about the civil war to everyone who loves a good story. View all 3 comments. I recalled once reading Rifles for Watie by Harold Keith when I was a kid probably over my summer vacation. I believed I had enjoyed the experience, so I decided to have another go at it now and hope the historical novel written for teens still holds up.

I am happy to report Rifles for Watie still turns my crank. The author Keith had a wonderful knack for turning descriptive phrases of the landscape, battle scenes, and soldiers' camp life.

His protagonist of Jeff Bussey from Linn County, Kansas, is a sensitive teenaged soldier who turns mean as a rattlesnake when he faces danger. Keith did tons of research as he laid out in his Author's Note before writing his novel. The level of violence surprised me, and I felt as if I was reading an adult novel.

There is also romance when Jeff falls in love with a rebel girl. I got a nice historical overview of the American Civil War fought in the far west theater the name Watie is pronounced as weighty. Stand Watie the Cherokee general who threw his support to the Confederates is an interesting character.

Keith also did the smart thing by dramatizing the acts of compassion performed on both sides of the conflict. My second reading of Rifles for Watie as an adult really worked out for me, and how often does that happen?

Well, I have to say not so frequently for me. Shelves: favorites , historical-fiction , male-protagonist. There are few reasons why I wanted to read this book. One, it was highly recommended to me by my sister. Two, is historical fiction about the civil war. And three, it is based in the mid-west which is mostly ignored during the civil war, except when they mention "Bloody Kansas" for one paragraph in the textbooks.

It was a bit long and it took me a while to read but it was well worth it. Hoping to prove himself and defend his home Jeff leaves to enlist as a soldier in the Union Army.

He has thi There are few reasons why I wanted to read this book. He has this idea that going into battle is an adventure. Basically the plot is Jeff finding out what war is really about but still perseveres.

Throughout the book Jeff becomes part of the infantry, cavalry, he's a scout and I'd say more but that might gave something away. It's surprising how long and short the book felt at times. I can feel how much work was put into this book. The amount of research must of been tremendous; like details from the terrible confederate coffee to the military jargon.

The weather is described, the uniforms, even the terrain. However, I didn't feel it was an overload of detail as some authors do. What really makes the book though is Jeff. Is there a guy like that out there anymore?

I kind of doubt it-unless we include the Amish He grows up so much during the war, but unlike some other books I've read with war he still tries. Yes, he learns that war is not an adventure and it isn't all it's cracked up to be but he still keeps true to what he knows is right. Jeff does become more somber but not altogether hopeless. As easy as it may be, he isn't extremely bitter though he knows not everyone is fighting for the things he is.

Jeff is just so so so I know that a lot of people like the bad boy type but I think good guys are more appealing. View 2 comments. Apr 03, Luisa Knight rated it liked it Shelves: own , young-adult , newbery-medal-honor , historical-fiction , civil-war. A boy gets homesick so deserts the army. Violence - 2 Incidents: The main character is in his first battle.

He sees a man with both legs sheared off. This excerpt is an example of how other battle scenes are described. There was a slow rattling in his throat, and his hands clawed and twitched. Then he lay quiet. Boys and men strip to get lice off. Huge splotches of pink freckles covered his entire body. His nude body was reddened from running through the shrubbery. A boy wanted a chance to see a girl again.

He looked at her, but she sat down silently on a settee… opposite. He guessed he was head over heels in love with Lucy. They hold hands for a moment. They kiss. A family all kiss a boy goodbye. A boy and a girl hold hands and they speak of marriage. They kiss and hold each other. The word "breast" is used a few times - not sexual. Conversation Topics - 11 Incidents: Mentions Negroes throughout the book.

It mentions drinking alcoholic drinks a number of times throughout the book. Men smoke pipes, cigarettes and cigars and chew tobacco throughout the book. A man has an American flag tattoo. Men gamble their pay away. Mentions card-playing.

A boy is ordered to confiscate livestock from civilians. He defies the orders later by returning one of the cows to a family. The main character takes some hard apple cider and gets drunk.

They had to learn to sing, dance, play the piano, ride horseback, read the classics and flirt with boys without seeming forward or immodest. It has a few battle scenes and shows how morals sunk as the war continued and what some desperate men did. Throughout the war the main character manages to hold mostly to his morale code and does not sink like the other men.

Most of the bad words shown in the report are substitute words; there are not many actual swear words. Then you should follow me! Because I have hundreds more just like this one. So Follow or Friend me here on GoodReads! View all 5 comments. Apr 28, Benji Martin rated it liked it. First, let me say that I get what is good about this book. It's unique. There aren't many decent children's books out there that follow a young soldier around through the entire Civil War, and the ones that do exist are all set in the eastern part of the U.

I didn't know much about what was going on in the west during the Civil War before I read this book. Most of the scholarship or fiction I've been exposed to has all been focused on the other part of the country. For it's length, it's a very First, let me say that I get what is good about this book.

For it's length, it's a very readable, usually exciting novel. Part of me wishes it was shorter, but in all honesty, it would have been better served by being longer. It wraps up very abruptly and it feels very rushed. The villain of the novel, Clardy, is killed off-screen, and we are denied a big confrontation.

The whole ending just seemed really anti-climatic, but maybe that's the way war really is? You fight and march, and everything's all build up and then suddenly it's all over.

I don't know. It didn't make for a great novel ending, though. Now let's play a quick game of Is It Racist?

I'm OK with a racist character existing. There are racist people out there, and of course, they're going to find their way into stories. I have more of a problem when the author or the omniscient narrator is blatantly racist. Let's examine the scenes in Rifles for Watie that made me cringe, and see whether they are reflections of the author's own racism or of they are simply racist characters in a time when the country was very racially charged.

The first scene that made me cringe was when Jeff first meets Lucy, his Confederate love interest. She is half-Cherokee, and according to our narrator, very beautiful.

Jeff too, finds her beautiful "even though her skin had a brownish cast. Lucy was so beautiful that it redefined Jeff's definition of beauty. My first inclination is to say that this is simply character racism. After all, it's Jeff's prejudices that we're dealing with here, but after thinking about it, I changed my mind.

The narrator says it in such a matter-of-course way. Then there's the dialect. The African-American slaves that the Union soldiers come across nearly always speak like they do on page Plenty of hams in theah, suh. I was ready to give Harold Keith another racist stamp for it, but then we meet the White Confederate soldiers, and they all speak with that dumb, exaggerated dialect, too.

So, I really think that, to Harold Keith, Americans from the west spoke in a kind of normal dialect. A few contractions here and there, but usually complete, coherent sentences. The moment you cross the Mason-Dixon line and enter the South, everyone, white and black, speaks in a kind of jumbled up, nonsensical manner.

In this case, Harold Keith wasn't racist, only regionalist. If he looked down on anyone for the way he thought they talked, it was the South as a whole.

The last scene I want to look at is on page There is a dying slave literally on his death bed. He is holding on to life, so that he can see a Union soldier coming to liberate his people before he dies.

Jeff walks into the room, and the man takes a look at his blue uniform, and says, "I bress God. I call this a white messiah moment. I think that Harold Keith saw his ancestors that served in the civil war as liberators coming in to save the slaves, even though there were men of many races serving on the union side.

The whole scene just seemed really condescending to me, and I think the novel would have been better without it. In the end, yeah. I think Harold Keith was a little bit racist.

It isn't overwhelming, but I do think he had some prejudices that came out in his novel. I liked Rifles for Watie, but I didn't love it. The main issue for me was the anti-climatic feeling I got from the abrupt ending. The uncomfortable feeling I got from those few scenes spoiled it some, too.

View all 4 comments. Nov 01, Kellyn Roth rated it it was amazing Shelves: books-for-teens , read-for-school , adventurous-books , historical-fiction , books-for-children. Okay, that was cool. I loved this book! If Walt Disney had ever made an epic movie of the Civil War that was kid friendly but still crammed with unbelievable danger, action, and romance, this would be that book.

I loved everything about it, not just the battle scenes but the scenes of camp life and even the fascinating information about hunting, tracking, and cooking in frontier days!

Jeff Bussey is the hero, and he is a really sp I loved this book! Jeff Bussey is the hero, and he is a really special kid. He's brave, loyal, little but brave, and crazy about dogs and horses. He lives in Kansas and he's really concerned about protecting his family from pro slavery raiders, so he joins the Union Army. But in the course of the book he goes from being Union infantry, to Union cavalry, to being a spy, to being a Confederate soldier!

One thing about this book that really bothered me was that it was so episodic. For the first half of the book every chapter is almost like a short story all to itself. The author introduces all kinds of amazing and colorful characters, but they come and go like the colors in a kaleidoscope! I also wanted to see more of Jeff's love interest Lucy, who was the most alluring love interest I've ever seen in a YA novel.

She was one part Indian princess and one part Southern Belle, and yet you could totally believe she would be attracted to a simple, straightforward guy like Jeff. I even felt like Clardy, the villain, was so intriguing that I would have liked to see more of him. Especially of the four-legged variety! Nothing could have spoiled my enjoyment of this amazing YA classic, but I wish there had been a little more about what slavery was like for black people, and how they felt about the war.

The author says about a thousand times that the Southern people are "fighting for what they believe in" but he never connects that to the real-life atrocities that slaves endured on a daily basis, or to the selfishness and greed of the slave-owners themselves.

And given that most of the slave-owners in this book are actually Native Americans, it's especially disappointing that Jeff never notices the irony of one colored race enslaving another one.

He argues with Lucy about preserving the Union, but he never says "a people that have sunk low enough to enslave black men will certainly enslave red men sooner or later. In the summer of , year-old Chet Roscow is captivated by the local news: A great white shark has been attacking and killing people up and down the Atlantic Coast, not far from Chet's hometown of Springfield, New Jersey.

Then one day, while swimming with his friends, Chet sees something in the water This acclaimed story of World War II is rich in suspense, characterization, plot, and spiritual truth. Every element of occupied Holland is united in a story of courage and hope: a hidden Jewish child, an underdiver, a downed RAF pilot, an imaginative, daring underground hero, and the small things of family life which surprisingly carry on in the midst of oppression.

By: Hilda van Stockum. By: Gertrude Chandler Warner. Johnny, a young apprentice silversmith, is caught with Otis, Hancock, and John and Samuel Adams in the exciting operations and subterfuges leading up to the Boston Tea Party and the Battle of Lexington.

As Johnny is forced into the role of a full-grown man in the face of his new country's independence, he finds that his relations with those he loves changes for the better as well. By: Esther Forbes. With fighting erupting around his Kansas farm, year-old Jefferson Davis Bussey can hardly wait to join the Union forces. He wants to defend his family from the dreaded Colonel Watie and his Cherokee Indian rebels. After enlisting, Jeff discovers the life of a soldier brings little glory and honor.

During battle, his friends die around him. As Jeff collects information, he wonders if he will be able to betray his new rebel companions when the time comes for him to return to the Union forces. Historian and author Harold Keith packs this well-researched novel with fascinating details and breath-taking action. My 12 year old loved this book. It was exciting and realistic. I loved it as it gave my son a literary example of a young man transitioning into adulthood with his honor intact.

I read this book for the first time in high school and loved it then. I've read it several times since and enjoyed it each time. The performance was quite good, the voices were well done and I enjoyed the pacing that the narrator used. I would listen to this book for hours at a time. Very nicely done. I would stay up at night unable to sleep, wondering how the book would end! If you do listen to this, and enjoy it like I did, you should listen to Mr.

Tucket, another great story. I read this book in 6th grade and loved it so much I read it probably 4 times that year. Over the years since then I've read it atleast once every 2 years or so. It never gets old. I'm so happy I found it on audible! Jeff learns about the destructiveness and waste of war. The novel examines the issues, weapons the Spencer rifle , and strategies of the western campaigns. Civil War Wiki Explore. Wiki Content.

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