Childrens Literature and Literacy

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Book title and Author(s): 
I am Abraham Lincoln by Brad Meltzer and Christopher Eliopoulos

Introduce the book (Genre and age range):
This is a Biography/Realistic Fiction story for children ages 5-8 years old. 

Summary:
This story loosely follows the life of Abraham Lincoln. It starts with his childhood in Indiana where he obtained his values of caring and standing up for others. It also showed his passion for education as well as him standing up to bullies. He then saw a slave ship pass by and was upset that people were not being treated as people. This then fast forwards to when he won the presidential election after losing four times. He then entered into the Civil War to free the slaves down south. He was considering not fighting, but remembered how he could not turn away and let others get hurt. The war lasted a long time and morale was low, so he gave a speech that contained the sentence “All men are created equal”, in order to boost the morale of his soldiers. Later, he passed a law that ended slavery in America. The story ends showing Lincoln’s legacy with people looking at the Lincoln Memorial. The story ends with Lincoln telling readers to use their voice against injustice as well as for others. He then promises that he will never stop fighting for what is right. 

Favorite Part:
My favorite part was when Lincoln got the respect of a person who was bullying him, because he stood up to him. The exchange in dialogue between the two was hilarious when Lincoln finished the conversation by saying, “Y’know I’m gonna be on the penny,” and the bully had responded with, “What’s a penny?” This is clearly a fourth wall break and does not make any sort of sense in the context of the story. However, it made me laugh really hard upon first reading and I felt that I would be doing this book an injustice by not including it.

Recommendation:
I would not recommend this book as a biography book. It does give Lincoln’s character and morals justice. However, it very much glosses over the reason for fighting in the civil war. The author chooses to simply say that the war was fought over slavery, and it makes sense to put that for children, since the war is a very complex topic. However, if we are to educate our students about the civil war, we need to not gloss over the reasoning, as this will miseducate them. I do think this is a fine piece of realistic fiction however. A lot of this story fits in the vein of “This could have happened,” barring the aforementioned fourth wall break. I think children will enjoy this story, but I am not sure whether this story will do them more harm than good.