Up Close: Robert F. Kennedy (Hardcover)

by Marc Aronson (Author) "HIS BROTHER JACK leans back, straight as a hoard, counterbalancing the wind..." (more)
Key Phrases: Bobby Kennedy, New York, Joseph Kennedy (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal
Grade 8 Up–The life and complicated times of Robert F. Kennedy are explored in this well-documented biography. Bobby was the third son in a large family and was often overlooked by his powerful father in favor of his brothers, Joe and Jack. He was also in the background in his professional life, helping out with Jack's campaigns and struggling to find his own path. Bobby worked on Senate committees investigating corruption and organized crime, served as attorney general during JFK's presidency, and was later elected as senator. He was assassinated in 1968 as he was campaigning for president. Aronson draws on a wide variety of sources and is very honest in examining his subject as a complete human being, warts and all. For example, Kennedy's empathy for outsiders and the oppressed is highlighted, as are incidents of lying, cover-ups, and behind-the-scenes manipulations. Small, but well-reproduced archival photos appear throughout, highlighting many of the individuals and events mentioned in the text. Some of the central themes, such as Bobby being virtually ignored by his father and constantly trying to prove himself, are dwelled on for a little too long. However, this text stands as an unbiased and illuminating resource.–Kristen Oravec, Cuyahoga County Public Library, Strongsville, OH
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Robert Kennedy is one of the most enigmatic figures of twentieth-century American politics, with a personality that blended ruthlessness and compassion. In this short biography, Aronson doesn't shy away from theorizing about the psychological roots of Kennedy's contradictory nature. He also exhaustively reports rumors of the era, from Joseph Kennedy's alleged Mafia connections to J. Edgar Hoover's sexual preferences ("it is likely that he was attracted to men"). The narrative tends to jump around quite a bit, offering information in the course of thematic arguments rather than chronologically, and the facts sometimes seem to get lost amid rumors and speculations. In particular, Kennedy's time as attorney general, senator, and presidential candidate receive less emphasis than one would expect. This entry in the Up Close series proves more effective as a character study than as an introduction to its subject's life and times and will be of most use to readers with some prior knowledge of the Kennedy dynasty. Sources for quotations are provided; a bibliography, consisting mostly of works for adults, will help lead curious readers to find out even more. Todd Morning
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Reading level: Young Adult
  
• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Viking Juvenile (April 5, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670060666
• ISBN-13: 978-0670060665
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #111,809 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Richie's Picks: ROBERT F. KENNEDY, April 6, 2007

By	Richie Partington "http://richiespicks.com" (Sebastopol, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

"Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up over the hill
With Abraham, Martin and John."
--Dion DiMucci

"Bobby Kennedy's short, eventful, and ultimately tragic life, you might say, was the transition from a time of secrets to one of exposure. We now know as much about his crippling flaws as his lofty aspirations. If he no longer looms as a pure Kennedy prince, that is all the better. For instead of an idol, he comes across as a dark, complex -- and deeply human --human being."

It is rare for me to share a book's ending but, in this instance, it is difficult to improve upon Marc Aronson's own conclusion of what he has so successfully accomplished in crafting this exceptional biography for middle school and high school students about Robert F. Kennedy, a larger than life figure from my childhood. I'd previously thought I knew a lot about Bobby Kennedy. Boy, was I wrong!

Actually, this is not a biography exclusively for adolescents, for the impeccable research that is at the foundation of this work will easily hold up when some college student decides to use it for a class, and the drama of Aronson's tale will quite handily engage adult readers as well. Marc Aronson is well known for doing informational adolescent literature the right way; in fact, he was awarded the very first Sibert Informational Book Award, an American Library Association award which honors an author "whose work of nonfiction has made a significant contribution to the field of children's literature."

What Marc Aronson was required to do, in writing his first book for Penguin's brand new CLOSEUP biography series for adolescents, debuting this spring, was to distill all of his extensive research down to 200 pages of adolescent reading. (This will be one of the trademarks of this series.) And while this has got to be a significant challenge for someone like Marc who is known for thoroughly exploring both their subject and the world in which that subject lives, what the reader ends up with here is a 200-page biography that is quite a manageable read for most teens and is an utterly engaging and often horrifying story containing not a single clunker or superfluous sentence.

In revealing the person that was Bobby Kennedy, the author lays out how Bobby's disposition, his position in the birth order of the famous Kennedy clan, and his father's disdain for him in contrast to the paternal nurturing of Joe Jr. and Jack, all had an immense -- some would say, fatal -- influence upon the man that Robert Kennedy grew up to be:

"Reckless courage was a characteristic Robert Francis Kennedy showed throughout his life. The bigger the challenge, the more eager he was to throw himself at it. As a child, Bobby flung himself into cold waters. As a lawyer in Washington, and later as Attorney General, he took on the nation's most dangerous mobsters. He went up, one-on-one, against Jimmy Hoffa, a corrupt union official who was as ruthless as he was powerful. At the height of white racial violence, Kennedy made himself the number-one target of armed and hate-crazed segregationists. Then at the worst moment of African-American fury and dispair he chose to speak in an all-black neighborhood. In a time when assassinations of outspoken leaders were all too common, he plunged into endless crowds."

An interesting strategy that Aronson employs in his writing here is his allusion to pieces of well known children's literature in explaining Bobby Kennedy's story, such as when he refers to Portsmouth Priory "as a kind of Hogwarts-under-construction," or when he compares the severing of Bobby from his brother through Jack's 1963 assassination to the agony suffered in THE GOLDEN COMPASS when people are severed from their daemons.

Looking like it will be the antithesis and an antidote to the vapid and/or exceedingly dense institutional biography series that you so often find on school library shelves, UPCLOSE: ROBERT KENNEDY is a superb piece of writing that transforms an icon into a real human being.