From School Library Journal
Grade 1-4-This is a delightful collection of excerpts from 10-year-old Teddy Roosevelt's journal kept during the year he and his family traveled through Europe. Each entry includes the date, location, and a line or two. The Roosevelts traveled mostly in England, France, and Italy but included Antwerp and Berlin in their tour. The world map on the endpapers that pinpoints stops will help children follow the route. In the illustrations, Roosevelt's brother, Ellie, and sister, Conie, are often pictured with him. Youngsters will enjoy the pictures filled with 19th-century details and those of the playful children leapfrogging through Roman ruins and boating in the moonlight. The book concludes with ideas for keeping journals and related activities, and a list of the boy's spelling errors corrected by the editor in the text. This interesting and informative book brings a famous American into focus for children and will be a perfect introduction to journal writing.
Susan Lissim, Dwight School, New York CityCopyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Gr. 1-3. When Teddy Roosevelt, the boy who would be the twenty-sixth president was 10, his family went abroad to Europe for a year, and he kept a journal. Jackson has edited that journal into very brief entries that retain both Teddy's boyish sense of what's great fun and glimpses his privileged life. Near Liverpool, he cuts his leg while trying to jump over a fence on a donkey. In London, he put his head on the block in the Tower. He enjoyed standing with one leg in Italy and the other in Switzerland on the border of those two countries, and he saw Vesuvius just after Christmas. Brighton's meticulous and historically researched illustrations make a fascinating study. There are notes in the back about keeping a journal, and an amusing list of the words that Teddy had misspelled in his original but that were corrected in this book. A bit more information about Roosevelt's family and later life would have been welcome.
GraceAnne DeCandidoCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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