Description
Published in 2000 as "Dear Ellen Bee: A Civil War Scrapbook of Two Union Spies," this dual project immerses young readers in the perilous spy ativities of Elizabeth Van Lew and Mary Elizabeth Bowser. Van Lew had formed a spy ring, smuggling food and books to prisoners and relaying messages to Union generals. Bowser joined the spy ring as a servant in the Confederate White House, where she assumed the role of a simpleminded, illiterate servant, while using her photographic memory absorb and pass on valuable information. The book explores the difficulties of a friendship that crosses racial and generational lines. The plot unfolds in a series of letters exchanged between the two women--correspondence that each might have slipped into a scrapbook for safekeeping. Some of the key portions of a few letters are written in the same code that Van Lew used to send messages to Union generals so that readers can share in the spying experience. Scrapbook ephemera also tells the tale. Keys to secret codes, autographed calling cards, dried flowers, photos, copied lines of poetry, stamps, and the like are represented visually as momentos to help develop the plot and provide an authentic framework for the text. These momentos will also fill the gap created by lost documents. The book was published in 2000 by Simon & Schuster.
