T. M. Usel

Summary: This is a very food biography of Abraham Lincoln especially for children because it provides crucial information without adding too many details. The author did a wonderful job of writing about Lincoln’s life and accomplishments on a level that young children would understand completely. The book was short and sweet it told you all the important things that about Lincoln’s life without being overly informative and boring.

Personal Reaction: I think this is an excellent biography for children. It was educational but not overly informative. The author also wrote this book in a manner that young children could not just read it, but also comprehend what they are reading which is very important. I also really liked the bold summary at the bottom of each page that reiterated what you had just learned.

Classroom Extension Ideas:
1. Discuss The Civil War
2. Learn The Gettysburg Address
3. Participate in mock debates.… (més)

This book is a biography on Benjamin Franklin. It gives the basic facts of Mr. Franklin's life from beginning to end. The book has large words and large pictures which I find to be very intising for the younger children. While this book tells a lot about Benjamin Franklin and who he was and what he did, it does not waste time on a bunch of details that are seemingly pointless. This helps the kids to be able to focus on the main and important parts of his life while still getting to know him.
The pictures help the children a great deal! They are large and most of them are in color which really helps give the children the opportunity to picture what is going on in their heads. This book breaks down every part of Benjamin Franklin's life and makes it very clear which parts of his life it is talking about so it is very easy to follow along with.
T.M. Usel did a very nice job of turning this in a book that would be very helpful to be able to tie together a science lesson and also a social studies or history lesson. The students would never even know that they were learning so much while reading just this one book!
My favorite part of this book is the review at the end of the book. In the very back of the book, the author has broken down the important dates of Mr. Franklin's life. He also has defined important words to know (vocabulary words) from the book. Throughout the book those words have also been printed in bold. These are the reasons why I gave this book 4 stars!… (més)

This book is about Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the United States. It tells the story about where Lincoln was born, what he did in his life, and about his death. Even though, this was a short book about Lincoln's life it had many details about his life. It even told how many children he had and how tall he was. His main goal while president was to win the war and to free the slaves. However, he was not well liked while he was president and was assassinated.

I personally was not looking forward to reading biographies for this reading assignment because I am not one to enjoy history. However, I chose a short book and I was amazed at how much detail about Lincoln's life was crammed into this book. The best part about this book was that since it was short I was able to comprehend what I read and actually enjoyed reading this book. Even though, I already knew a lot about Lincoln from history class it was interesting to learn facts about him that had nothing to do with history, like how tall he was.

I would have my class make top hats out of construction paper and maybe try wrapping them with felt to make them look more realistic. My class would also make black beards to go with their hats out of black dyed cotton balls. For an older class I would have them do a fun type of research project. Instead of looking for basic facts about Lincoln, they would be looking for any unusual facts about him, such as what size shoe he wore. Then they would tell the class about the unusual fact they found. If there are limited unusual facts about one president, I may have each student pick a different president this way each student would have something different to tell the class about.… (més)