Grace Hansen

This short children's book gives a general overview of Jane Goodall and her work with chimpanzees. Although the book does present factual and relevant information, I felt as though it was lacking in some ways. As previously stated, the information given is very general, which in and of itself, I do not find to be a problem as this is a children's book. My issue, however, is that the way in which the book is laid out (the short length and lack of in-depth information) would suggest that it show more would be an appropriate book for children to peruse independently, without the guidance of an adult. However, I don't find that that would be possible with this book as far as young children are concerned. The book is riddled with dates and vocabulary that very young children would likely not be able to comprehend on their own, despite the timeline and glossary at the end of the book. That being said, I would think that the book would also be too simple and the information too shallow for older readers who could understand the vocabulary and appreciate Jane Goodall's history. I wish that the author had either (1) presented the information in such a way that the book would be more enticing to young (pk-1) readers or (2) provided more detail so that the book would be an appropriate read for children who are a bit older (grades 2-4). That being said, the book would perhaps be a good choice for pk-1 students to read with the help of an adult who is both willing and able to clarify those parts of the book that may be confusing. show less

This 24 page book for children is just not very good. The author seems to have confused the Egyptians with the Sumerians; the Egyptian didn't generally write on clay, they wrote on papyrus and practiced on pot shards, chiefly. The priapic baboons on the stele on p.12 seem to indicate a carelessness in selecting the images; ancient Egyptian art included a lot of ithyphallic sculpture, but it is customary to leave those items out of children's book illustrations. There is a grammatical error show more on p. 18; again, for a book containing so few sentences, even one grammatical error indicates carelessness. The reproduction quality of the photographs is actually quite good; it is a shame that the book overall is so poorly written and thought out. There are no picture credits. show less

This book highlights the life of Jackie Robinson. My daughter who is in kindergarten was able to read this book to me with little assistance. From a child perspective she referenced what is racism, and why was he the only “brown man” on the team. This book allowed me to explain history to my daughter. She was able to compare and contrast the difference of then and now. Her words “thankfully it’s not like that anymore.” This is a good book to reflect on African American history for show more younger children. show less

For what it is, a presidential biography for 1st and 2nd graders, this is a short, succinct biography with beautiful illustrations gathered from the Getty and, I believe, other stock illustration archives.