WILL ROGERS AND HIS GREAT INSPIRATION

Taylor’s illustrated children’s book teaches kids about the diverse influences on legendary entertainer Will Rogers.

Known for his folksy humor (his radio act helped to inspire late-night comedy), Will Rogers’ legacy is one of kindness, dedication, and hard work. As the Will Rogers interpreter at the Will Rogers Memorial Museum, Taylor has passed along this legacy in his story times, school visits, and travels around the country; students see him in cowboy boots with a rope in hand, re-enacting Rogers’ routines and bringing history to life. The author begins the narrative in Rogers’ childhood in the late 19th century, when he learned his famous rope tricks, and continues into his adulthood and his success as a radio sensation whose popularity affected church attendance (“Without his rope, Will discovered a whole new way of sharing his jokes and ideas with even larger audiences”). Readers will also learn Rogers’ most well-known saying: “I never met a man I didn’t like.” This is an engaging picture-book biography; the illustrations by White are delightfully whimsical while remaining stylistically simple—a neat trick in itself. Evoking a Western feel, as one would expect from a book about someone raised on a ranch in Oklahoma, the illustrations reflect happiness and adventure while directly supporting the text. Themes of diversity and inclusion run throughout the narrative; readers can easily see, both in the text and the pictures, how Rogers was influenced by a diverse array of people, including his parents, other cowboys, and his wife. The reflection questions at the end of each section encourage children to connect what they’ve learned to their own lives. (Taylor enjoins readers to “mak[e] connections with others and us[e] [their] talents to bring folks together.”) The foreword by Reba McEntire and Rex Linn is icing on the cake, providing added authenticity.

A delightfully winsome and educational biography of Will Rogers for young readers.