Trivia

This was also the title and subject of the last film project of John Ford, but it is not clear whether the script was the one which Ford tried to make. There were other connections between James Lee Barrett and Ford, most notably that Barrett wrote the script of the TV remake of Ford's Stagecoach (1939) (Stagecoach (1986)).

"April Morning," the 1961 novel by Howard Fast, was about Adam Cooper's coming of age during the Battle of Lexington. One critic describes the novel's opening: Adam is "dressed down by his father, Moses, misunderstood by his mother, Sarah, and plagued by his brother, Levi." In the backdrop are the peaceful people of Lexington, forced "to go into a way of war that they abhorred."

April Morning (1988) is the film adaptation of the 1961 novel by Howard Fast. Directed by Delbert Mann, the screenplay was written by James Lee Barrett and starred Chad Lowe as Adam and Tommy Lee Jones as Moses. It was adapted for TV in the Hallmark Hall of Fame in 1988. Although it is set at the very beginning of the American Revolution, it is more about Adam's journey to manhood and his relationship with his parents.

Composer Allyn Ferguson's score was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award as "Outstanding Music Composition for a Miniseries or a Special (Dramatic Underscore)."

Though not written as a young adult story, it was increasingly assigned in middle school English and social studies classes, due to the age of the protagonist and Fast's meticulous efforts to recreate the texture of daily life in colonial America and the political currents on the eve of the American Revolution. Three themes in the novel were coming of age, non-violence, rights of man, and the truth.