Johnny Tremain may well be counted the first classic story of Boston for young people. This is not alone because of the accurate picture of the pre-Revolutionary town, with its wandering streets and busy wharves, its crafts and trades, markets and merchants, nor because of the rich abundance of details about the manners of the period, its ways of living and customs of trade, nor even because it is an arresting portrayal of the stubborn resistance of the Patriots and townspeople against arbitrary acts of the British Parliament. It is a distinguished book, primarily, because the people in it are vigorously endowed with the human quality which binds one generation to another. (p. 270)