Will Rogers: An American Legend - Softcover

Keating, Frank

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0152063366 ISBN 13: 9780152063368

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008

Synopsis

Will Rogers loved people—and adventure—from the time he was a young boy. As a man, he traveled around the world as a trick roper in a Wild West show and became a favorite radio, vaudeville, and Broadway entertainer. Filled with Will Rogers’s own timeless quotes, this picture book tells the story of a humble man who lived the American dream.

About this title

About the Author

FRANK KEATING has written essays for various publications, including the Washington Post. Will Rogers is his first picture book. He once served as the governor of Oklahoma. He lives in Virginia.
MIKE WIMMER has illustrated many fine books for children, including Home Run by Robert Burleigh, which was called a “grand slam” in a starred review from Publishers Weekly. He lives in Oklahoma.www.mikewimmer.com

From School Library Journal

Grade 2-4-A beautifully illustrated, nicely designed, but flawed book. Wimmer's oil paintings are striking in terms of their realism and their authenticity with regard to time period. In fact, it is only from the pictures that children unfamiliar with (this) Mr. Rogers will know when events take place, as Keating mentions neither dates nor specific occurrences. There are charming touches of whimsicality in the art, such as Will lassoing a puppy's tail. However, there is also a certain lack of sensitivity. In one picture, Will is playing "Cowboys and Indians" with his children, and the youngsters are depicted as stereotypical savages, whooping and attacking with tomahawk and bow and arrow and wearing headbands of feathers. In another instance, the text refers to Will speaking "common sense to common people," accompanied by the only illustration featuring African Americans. Keating's text is confusing and disjointed. Will goes from "ten years or so in school," to flying everywhere he could, and then returning to a previously unmentioned Betty and their four children. The text is littered with oblique statements such as "Will Rogers loved the land.- the land taught him that all men were good-," and is fraught with sentence fragments and questionable grammar and syntax. Although the author quotes liberally from Rogers's own words, the kind of influence the man exerted in his day never emerges, and his most famous appellation of "Good Will Ambassador" is never mentioned. This book does not do justice to this American icon.
Grace Oliff, Ann Blanche Smith School, Hillsdale, NJ
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0152063366
• ISBN 13: 9780152063368
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Wimmer Mike