Customer Reviews

Dear Mr. President: Theodore Roosevelt Letters from a Young Coal Miner

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

My name is John Olsen. I am a very big Theodore Roosevelt fan. I collect T.R. items and have study many of his writings. Jennifer Armstrong has written this book so convincingly well that I almost thought T.R. had actually written these letters. As explained in the beginning of the book, one of her major resources for the book was Roosevelt's own "Letters to His Children." So, while T.R. never had a pen pal who was a young coal miner, I am almost certain that it could have easily happened. T.R. was exactly that type of person. He was a big kid himself and would have been thrilled to have written to such a person as the young coal miner in the story. The book is filled with references to many of the exciting events of the life of Theodore Roosevelt, one of our greatest Presidents ever. Furthermore, there are detailed explanations of numerous words relating to mining and Polish culture. I strongly recommend this book for those who want to get their pre-teens excited about history and Presidents. I rather like the "Dear Mr. President" concept as a means to excite young people about Presidents. I look forward to reading the others in this series. Just remember who this book was written for and don't overanalyze it. Enjoy it!!

My daughter and I thoroughly enjoyed this book. What a wonderful way to provide a glimpse into the past. My daughter, age 10, had no difficulty in telling fiction from non-fiction. The design of the book is incredible. We were particularly impressed by the use of web prompts through out the book. A visit to the Winslow Press website is a must. There is nothing else out there like it on the web.

i am someone who likes the letter format of books and this book has it. if you like books in letter fomat than this is a good book to read and at the end it has information on thedore roosevelt. i rated this 5 stars

13 year old Frank Kovacs spends most of his days underground in a coal mine tending the mules that pull cars. Having to spend 2 cents on a postage stamp was especially hard on a child, but he is so concerned about the assisination of William Mckinley that he writes to the new President, Theordore Rooselvelt, on Sepetember 20th, 1901 to be especially careful. To his surprise the President writes back! This begins a warm father-son type relationship that gives T.R. an eye-opening and intimate view of life in the mines. As Kovacs writes about the condition of mine work and the grueling child labor practices the President becomes increasingly disturbed and infuriated with the coal industry standards ( " the bosses don' let the boys wear gloves even when it's real cold and even though the sufur on the coal makes your fingers bleed")Accompanying the fictional text are real-life characters such as Mother Jones, newsprint illustrations and archived photos. In keeping with fact, the book concludes when Teddy is ready to send in federal troops to Pennsylvania to sieze the mines. The threat was enough to make amends- a shorter work day (8 hours) and a 10 percent increase in wages to sustain the workers' families (though it doent clarify the outcome of child labor laws.) The Winslow Press invented a whole series of historical fiction books in a conceptual pen-pal form that teaches history with superb compassion and truth.

In my creative writing classes during college, we were taught a rule about historical fiction. That was, you cannot take a widely known historical figure and make them do things that everyone knows they did not do. I think this "Dear Mr. President" series is ill-conceived. They are a set of books full of letters that we know were never written by our presidents. The whole premise just does not stand up well from a historical fiction point of view. Whereas you or I may be able to take this with a grain of salt, what about the readers, aged 9-12, for whom these books are recommended? I'm not convinced that they have the background to understand the division between history and historical fiction of this type. What do you think? Finally, I'm also not convinced by the "Polishness" of the Polish boy writing letters to the President. It's not enough to simply ascribe a "working class" accent/grammar to this character. If he is indeed a Polish immigrant, he would have speech characteristics that are specific to his Polish background. Simply making the character sound uneducated is not giving proper credit to the fact that he is an ESL speaker.