Make Photo Book
Grade 1-3-- These books are a step easier than Adler's "First
Biographies" (Holiday). Facts and personality are expertly mixed in the
small blocks of text; Adler does a good job of covering character
traits, family members, and large events without overburdening readers
with too many facts. Calm, uncluttered color paintings add visual
interest, extend the text (sometimes rather far: readers will have to
find out elsewhere why the Boston Tea Party was "attended" by native
Americans), and ennoble their presidential subjects--Lincoln, with an
extra homely face and dark clothing, always stands out in a group, and
Washington is last seen on a tall horse, atop a bluff, waving to a
passing eagle. Some simplification is inevitable--Lincoln's election is
the only mentioned cause of the Civil War and there's not a black face
to be seen in . . . Washington, for instance--but by and large, these
are inviting gateways, both to the array of longer books on these two
presidents, such as Kathie Billingslea Smith's (both Messner, 1987), and
to U.S. history in general. --John Peters, New York Public Library
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