Customer Reviews

I Pledge Allegiance (On My Own History)

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If you want to learn about the history and terminology behind the Pledge of Allegiance I would recommmend this book to you. This book is appropriate for third through fifth grade students. The large type text is accompanied by many illustrations. Many students can read this book on their own and it would be appropriate for teachers to use with students as well.

The author, June Swanson is a historian with the pictures done by freelance artist Rick Hanson. I Pledge Allegiance consists of forty pages with the first printing completed in 1990. This is a children's book offering easy to understand background on the history of The Pledge of Allegiance. The idea behind the book is to help children learn more about what they are reciting daily in their respective classrooms.

The book begins with the 1880s as Henry Ford is building a buggy that runs on gasoline and electric lights coming into homes. Most of the pages contain a paragraph with a matching image, such as the skyscraper that stood eleven stories high being built in Chicago. Next the frontiers were becoming States. In 1888 there was a children's magazine called, the Youth's Companion that was delivered weekly through out the United States. " It was filled with adventure stories".

The text within these pages has the key words to learn in bold - pledge, allegiance, Republic, Nation, indivisible, liberty and Justice. While the first four words were used within the same page to make comparisons of the meaning, the others needed one to two pages to guide the students. Republic was explained as a kind of government where everyone can vote with Nation being another term for country. The illustrations show the students in the classroom, people voting and the White House. Indivisible is when something cannot be divided or pulled apart. The illustration shows a war between the northern and southern states as an example.

Most of this was difficult for my son to absorb, partly due to his disability and also he was not interested in learning this in one session. It helped to go over a few pages in I Pledge Allegiance daily so he could comprehend it fully. The students in the book all knew that liberty meant freedom and then learned that Justice was about being fair with the same laws for everyone. " The children now understood that they were promising to help the government of the United States give freedom to all and treat people.

We love history in my household and this book is no exception. It is perfect for my 7 year olds History lessons and he has enjoyed it enough we now are reading it for a bed time story!