From School Library Journal
Grade 2-4-- A recycling of TV shows from the '50s in book form. Both writers seem to have lifted the dialogue from telescripts, changed stage direction to prose narrative, and added brief bridges as background. Voila! Four books of rootin' tootin' adventure. Variously, Davy saves the bacon for Andrew Jackson in the Creek war, cleans the Ohio River country of marauding bad guys, rescues his comical sidekick from the consequences of his foolish bragging, and then goes on to save the Texans from Santa Anna at the Alamo. Whoa, now. Didn't we all learn at Granddaddy's knee that the defenders all died at the hands of the Mexican Army? Well, yes, it must be admitted, they did. And these books do 'fess up in brief afterwords that they contain manifold errors or omissions of fact. There is a culminating distortion of free-flowing mistakes: the dense forests of east Texas are described as treeless plains; a prairie dog town is planted a thousand miles from its natural location; Comanches are presented in Cherokee territory, then later referred to as Iowa . . . there are too many similar errors to count. For an antidote to this fribbling malarkey, see Tom Townsend's Davy Crockett (Eakin Pr, 1987), which (while fictionalized) is thoroughly researched and accurately presented. --Ruth Semrau, Lovejoy School, Allen, TX
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
