Linked by Alley’s amiably humorous scenes of a small class, led by a Ms. Frizzle–like teacher, trooping through a reconstructed colonial village and sampling hands-on activities, Katz’s poems—some rhymed, some in free verse—open windows on daily life in those olden days. The young visitors reflectively comment on such diverse experiences as dipping candles and walking on cobblestones, playing familiar games (“Rolling hoops and flying kites, / Ice skating, bird-nesting, snowball fights”), sampling unfamiliar dishes (“Hush puppies, brown betty, flummery, crowdy, / Pocket soup, syllabub, apple pandowdy—”), mingling with the dancers at a powwow demonstration, and participating in a traditional Native corn-planting ritual. Sandwiched between maps of the Eastern seaboard that show both indigenous populations and early European settlements, pleasingly varied in tempo and tone, these 20 poems form a hard-to-resist invitation to “taste a spoonful of gooseberry fool, / Hundreds of years away from school.” (glossary) (Poetry. 7-10)
