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HAMILTON by Frank Keating

HAMILTON

by Frank Keating ; illustrated by Mike Wimmer

Pub Date: Sept. 22nd, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-0656-8
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster

Diverted from their Mount Rushmore series, veteran collaborators still produce another noble profile carved in granite.

Alexander Hamilton may not be literally cut into a mountain the way the subjects of their Abraham (2017), George (2012), and Theodore (2006) are, but Keating and Wimmer present him in the same lapidary way, with oratorical, self-aggrandizing narration (“I was a father of my country”; “I was a whirlwind”; “I was all action”) paired to oil paintings done in a photorealistic style in which figures (white throughout) dressed in elaborate period costume look as if they’re posing for formal portraits or making up a historical diorama. The narrator retraces his career in politics and the military, trumpets his belief in strong central government and a national army, points to the newspaper, the banks, and other institutions he founded, and sums himself up as a sterling example of an immigrant who led “a life of enormous consequence.” But actual biographical detail is so scanty that, for instance, he confines all references to wife and children to one sentence, leaving his illegitimate birth, his father, and (until the closing author’s note) even his death unmentioned. For a more rounded, nuanced portrait of the great man steer younger readers to David A. Adler’s Picture Book of Alexander Hamilton, illustrated by Matt Collins (2019). (This book was reviewed digitally with 11-by-17-inch double-page spreads viewed at 77% of actual size.)

A buffed-up exercise in patriotic idolatry.

(bibliography) (Picture book biography. 7-10)