From Publishers Weekly
The folksy, adventurous Oklahoma-born newspaper columnist and celebrated wit who never met a man he didn't like takes center stage in this admiring if impressionistic picture book biography. Oklahoma governor Keating emphasizes Rogers's personality in place of much expository information, quoting him on nearly every page ("They may call me a rube and a hick, but I would rather be the man who bought the Brooklyn Bridge than the man who sold it"). An evocation of Rogers's childhood in Indian Territory, where he learned "to ride and rope as well as any boy or man" and also to love books, abruptly yields to a scene of Rogers suddenly grown up and traveling by plane "everywhere he could" and "always joking and sharing with others the humor and joy of living." Readers are almost certain to want more of an explanation of Rogers's career, but it does not come. Wimmer (Summertime) makes excellent use of both natural and interior light in his realistic oil paintings, capturing the beauty of Rogers's native state as well as his lively spirit. The book design plays up the homey western theme, with linked horseshoes branding bold W's on the endpapers and the text presented as a series of pages pulled out of an old manual typewriter. Ages
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Grade 2-4-A beautifully illustrated, nicely designed, but flawed book. Wimmer's oil paintings are striking in terms of their realism and their authenticity with regard to time period. In fact, it is only from the pictures that children unfamiliar with (this) Mr. Rogers will know when events take place, as Keating mentions neither dates nor specific occurrences. There are charming touches of whimsicality in the art, such as Will lassoing a puppy's tail. However, there is also a certain lack of sensitivity. In one picture, Will is playing "Cowboys and Indians" with his children, and the youngsters are depicted as stereotypical savages, whooping and attacking with tomahawk and bow and arrow and wearing headbands of feathers. In another instance, the text refers to Will speaking "common sense to common people," accompanied by the only illustration featuring African Americans. Keating's text is confusing and disjointed. Will goes from "ten years or so in school," to flying everywhere he could, and then returning to a previously unmentioned Betty and their four children. The text is littered with oblique statements such as "Will Rogers loved the land.- the land taught him that all men were good-," and is fraught with sentence fragments and questionable grammar and syntax. Although the author quotes liberally from Rogers's own words, the kind of influence the man exerted in his day never emerges, and his most famous appellation of "Good Will Ambassador" is never mentioned. This book does not do justice to this American icon.
Grace Oliff, Ann Blanche Smith School, Hillsdale, NJCopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
