I had heard about this book for a while - seen it in stores, heard it referenced in the one day I spent in my accidental enrollment in an elementary ed. course, etc. - and pretended to know all about it but didn't really. When my professor brought it out the other day to show us, I secretly got really excited because I could finally have an actual wealth of knowledge about this popular little picture book. And honestly, it's really cool. Since I am going to be licensed to teach both middle school English and middle school History, I'm pretty interested in finding books that can span both of those subjects. [I'm really interested in finding books that can span all subjects, for the record.] This particular book follows the childhoods of four of our Founding Fathers, John Hancock, Paul Revere, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin. These childhoods range from being semi-fictional to [as far as I know] very fictional, but they're extremely humorous and they all relate to things we know as fact about those Founding Fathers. For example, John Hancock has a hard time not writing his name extremely large on all his elementary papers, and Paul Revere shouts constantly as a young boy. It's cute and it's very comical, and it would be a great way to introduce some funny post-unit material to students after they've learned the necessary information to "get it." All the little stories in this book are funny because we already know about what the grown men were like and what they are famous for; the book wouldn't be nearly as interesting to students if they hadn't learned those facts yet. There's something very powerful to a middle school student, though, to be able to watch a movie or read a book that has references to what they've learned in school and to get the reference. This book provides a great tool for that.
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