Patience Wright America's First Sculptor and Revolutionary Spy

Shea, Pegi Dietz
Andserson, Bethanne
Non Fiction, Biographical Picture book
3-5
Henry Holt and Company, 2007


This book is about Patience Wright. She was born in 1725 in Oyster Bay, NY. She was raised as a Quaker by her parents John and Patience. She had eight sisters and one brother. When she was four years old she discovered her love for sculpting. When she was 23 she married a man name Joseph Wright. He was a landowner. He died in 1769 leaving her no money. She wanted to support her children through her art. She moved to Philadelphia to live with her sister and began rebelling against the Quaker lifestyle. With financial help from a lawyer she and her sister opened their own studio. She sculpted these from life models or memory. To create life size figures she used wire and paper mache To keep the wax warm she would keep it on her thighs under her dress. She would blindly shape the wax face under her skirts. During one of the winters her studio burnt down when she was out of town. All of her wax figures melted. Jane Mecom, Ben Franklin's sister urged them to open a studio in London. On Feb 3 1772 she moved to London. She attracted royalty as customers. One time she was almost arrested for having Ben Franklin's head in her bag but it was one of her wax figures. In 1773 this was the year of the Boston Tea Party. The colonist began their revolt against England. Communications were cut off with America. She needed to find a way to send her information letting America know what Britain was up to. She would sculpt a head and stick her message inside of the hollow head. She sent these messages to Continental Congress in Philadelphia. She became a spy. The Treaty of Paris ended the American Revolution in 1783 and she received a letter from George Washington. He wanted to have a wax portrait made. Unfortunately she died in England before she could sculpt him. Her son painted George Washington's portrait and helped design Americas first coins.

I found this book to be so interesting. When I was looking for my biographical picture book I didn't know where to start and so I picked a random book. I learned so much from this book and had never heard this story before. The whole story is so amazing. It is crazy to think that she was a spy by using wax figures. Another thing that shocked me was how she kept the wax under her skirt to keep it warm and she molded without looking at it. Usually the pictures are my favorite part of the book but for this book it was the text. The pictures were created by paint. The colors were all pastel. You could tell that the illustrator used something over the paint for the background to create texture. My favorite picture was where Ben Franklin's head is in a box. This is kind of humorous, but true! She would put all of the important information that she would hear while she was in Britain and send it over to the United States. This book gave a lot of important dates like the Boston Tea party, and it talked about the American Revolution. It is bursting full of information and it was information that I wasn't really aware of so I think that is why I enjoyed this book so much.

I would definitely use this book in my classroom. You could use it when talking about the American Revolution during social studies. I think that this book would best be used for upper grade levels because it is so much information.