<i>George Washington’s Birthday: A Mostly True Tale</i> (review)
2012; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 65; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/bcc.2012.0022
ISSN1558-6766
Autores Tópico(s)American Constitutional Law and Politics
ResumoReviewed by: George Washington’s Birthday: A Mostly True Tale Elizabeth Bush McNamara, Margaret. George Washington’s Birthday: A Mostly True Tale; illus. by Barry Blitt. Schwartz & Wade, 2012. 32p. Library ed. ISBN 978-0-375-94458-1 $20.99 Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-375-84499-7 $17.99 Ad 6–9 yrs. Here’s a promising idea: introduce Presidents Day with a book about Washington’s birthday—at least, a sassy, fictionalized vision of what the future Founder’s seventh birthday might have been like. The event starts out as a pretty disappointing affair: despite George’s hints, nobody in the family seems to give any thought to the day’s significance, and the birthday boy is expected to go through his customary rounds of lessons with his older stepbrother and chores with his father, which leads directly to the storied debacle of the cherry tree and the little axe. McNamara coyly slips snippets of legend and apocrypha into the day’s events, which will tickle kids who get the joke but leaves the uninitiated to the mercy of the endnotes to sort the whole business out. (And best wishes to the adult reader who gets to explain the gag article heading “Don’t Axe Don’t Tell Repealed” in the elder Washington’s newspaper.) Line-and-watercolor pictures in washed-out shades of blue, beige, and rose go for broad humor and portray the bewigged George as a mercurial little spitfire, no doubt intended as comical contrast to the more sedate images assigned to him later in life. Kids who want to explore how a presidential legend can take on a life of its own will be better served by Deborah Hopkinson’s delightful Abe Lincoln Crosses a Creek (BCCB 10/08), but this could offer a light diversion among more substantial Presidents Day readings. Copyright © 2012 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
Referência(s)