Jonah Winter

This book serves as a mini-biography for fourteen men considered to be part of the founding of the United States of America. This includes such heavy hitters as George Washington and some lesser knowns like Benjamin Rush. Each person is given a page spread with a full-page illustration on the left. The right side includes a few paragraphs about their life as pertaining to colonial or early America, notable quotations, and various statistics about them.

In the past I've enjoyed some nonfiction picture books by Jonah Winter, but this one was just odd to me. Winter appears to be going for this jocular, howdy-do tone throughout the book with folksy words like "pardner" and dropping the "g" in "-ing" verbs (as seen in the subtitle). The watercolor illustrations are similarly irreverent. I guess this was all designed to whet the appetite of some kids to get them to delve deeper into history, but there was so little of substance about each featured person that it felt almost useless to read this because certain aspects of their lives were merely alluded to with no real information given.

A weird note about the stats was that they included things like height, wealth, etc. but then also mentioned "slaves owned" before noting the founders' stance on slavery. I feel like the point was to say how the founders' beliefs often clashed with their actions, but it came across as a very sterile way to talk about humans being forced into horrible servitude for their entire lives. The stats would literally go from land owned to cattle owned to slaves owned as though objects, not people, were being discussed. Even in the back matter, slavery is mentioned as an "emotional topic" for founding fathers since some were "morally opposed" but "slaves were a crucial part of the American economy." I know that slavery was not the focus on the book so it wasn't necessarily going to be discussed in detail, but this was handled in a very peculiar way that didn't address the human angle.

On the flip side, one thing fun about the stats was that every featured person's feelings toward the country of France were included, which was bizarre but at least entertaining. Overall though, this book felt like a swing and a miss.… (més)