by Tim O’Shei ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2002
Jimmy Carter’s life story presented specifically for the reader who has a report to write for school. The print story is a straightforward, complete one for the young reader and researcher. However, the reader can find much more information at the My Reports Web site. This is what the publisher hopes the young researcher will do: read the book and then connect to the links provided from the Web. With frequent color photographs and brief, easy-to-understand chapters and sentences, the author allows the young reader to get to know the public life of the former president. He briefly highlights the important events of Carter’s presidency: the backlash from the Nixon pardon, daughter Amy’s struggles with the spotlight, Roslyn’s speech to Congress, the energy crisis, the difficult and demanding peace process in the Middle East, the capture of the American hostages in Iran, and their eventual release. He paints an admirable picture of Carter: hard-working and caring, someone who lives from his heart. He spares the young reader the infamous Playboy “lust in my heart” episode but tells much about Carter as an involved ex-president who is active with peace and justice causes. There is little new information here, just the bare facts that can be easily found in any resource about the presidents. Certain elementary-school assignments have been around forever and the presidential report is one of them. This series and the accompanying easy-to-navigate Web site will make this predictable assignment less daunting and a little more interesting for the writer. (index, chapter notes, annotated Web addresses, bibliography.) (Nonfiction. 7-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-7660-5051-3
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Enslow
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2002
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by Simon Adams ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1999
With an emphasis on Western “makers” of the millennium, and, perhaps inevitably, deep coverage of the last 200 years and fleeting coverage of the first few centuries, this volume offers brief biographical sketches of 1,000 people who had an impact on the last 1,000 years. Profusely illustrated and printed on heavy glossy stock, this is a coffee table book for children, meant to be dipped into rather than read from start to finish. Organized chronologically, with a chapter for each century, the parade of people is given context through a timeline of major events, with those of particular importance discussed in special boxes. As with any effort of this kind, there are surprising omissions (the publisher is creating a website for readers’ own suggestions) and inclusions, a Western predominance that grows more pronounced in the later centuries, and an emphasis on sports and celebrity that finishes off the last few decades. The selection can seem highly subjective and provocatively arbitrary, e.g., the US presidents from Nixon back to Teddy Roosevelt are all covered, but none after Nixon. Still, there is a clear effort to include a wide variety of countries and cultures, and this ambitious effort will be the starting point for many historical journeys. (chronology, index) (Nonfiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-7894-4709-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: DK Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1999
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by Simon Adams
by Karen Clemens Warrick ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2000
The author of the century-old, still-beloved Little Women led an extraordinarily interesting life herself, as Warrick makes plain in this dutiful biography. Alcott’s often-absent father, full of educational dreams and schemes and a friend of Emerson, her hard-working and hard-pressed mother, and her three sisters (models, as is well-known, for the siblings in the book) moved a great deal as she was growing up. Alcott soon realized that if there was to be money, she had to make it, and found a career writing sensational trash under a pseudonym and wonderful family stories under her own name. The biography opens with the story of Alcott’s letters from a Civil War hospital where she worked as a nurse, published in Boston Commonwealth magazine and her first real literary success. Vignettes and quotations enliven the text, which is written in a direct and straightforward style. Alcott’s work as a feminist and her possible love life are mentioned, if briefly. For those seeking yet another biography, this will serve. (b&w photos, not seen, chronology, notes, glossary, index) (Biography. 10-12)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7660-1254-9
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Enslow
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
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by Karen Clemens Warrick & illustrated by Sherry Neidigh
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