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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake) | J 921 LINCOLN | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Oakdale Library | J 921 LINCOLN | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Lincoln Shot So begins this intimate portrait of Abraham Lincoln. Conceived as a one year anniversary edition of a newspaper, dated April 14, 1866, strongly evocative of the time and the nation's mood. The moment-by-moment recital of the events of the day that ended in assassination holds readers enthralled awaiting the tragic end. The account of the flight, capture, and hanging of some of the conspirators is riveting.
From there, Denenberg moves to the log cabin in Kentucky and Lincoln's life unfolds. The boy, the man, the husband and the father is portrayed as a trifle clumsy, often unsure of himself, and plagued by dark moods. Denenberg's Lincoln is ambitious and modest. He struggles with his role as leader as the Civil War nears.
In the third part of the book, the year-by-year account of the Civil War is seen through Lincoln's eyes. Every defeat and every victory deepens his struggle and resolve.
Award-winning artist Christopher Bing evokes an 1866 newspaper with pen-and-ink scenes from Lincoln's life: Lincoln wrestling Jack Armstrong, Lincoln taking vows with Mary Todd, Grant and Lee at Appomattox, and Booth shooting Lincoln.
Rich Deas, book designer, has folded Bing's art and sourced archival images into layouts that are undistinguishable for 1866 newspaper design. Every facet of design, from frames to advertisements, has been exactingly molded to evoke the era.
The oversized vertical trim underscores the newspaper look and feel. Meticulously researched and exquisitely designed, Lincoln Shot is a uniquely inviting and accessible tribute to Lincoln, whose birth bicentennial is February 12, 2009.
Author Notes
Barry Denenberg's biographies have garnered excellent reviews. He won a Jefferson Cup Honor Award for When Will This Cruel War Be Over?: The Civil War Diary of Emma Simpson (Dear America, 1996). The Jefferson Cup is awarded by the Virginia Library Association's Children's and Young Adult Round Table. It honors a distinguished biography, historical fiction or American history book for young people. Mr. Denenberg lives in New York state.
Christopher Bing won a 2001 Caldecott Honor Award for Casey at the Bat , the classic 1888 poem. The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere was called "an impressive volume" (PW). In a starred review, Booklist termed it "a remarkable visual interpretation of Longfellow's classic poem." Mr. Bing lives in Massachusetts.
Rich Deas is an Art Director, designer, and illustrator with a strong focus on book design. He has created hundreds of book covers. Mr. Deas lives in New Jersey.
Reviews (4)
Horn Book Review
(Intermediate, Middle School) Throughout our country's history, commemorative editions of newspapers have provided an immediate reaction to and permanent record of our triumphs ("Man on the Moon!") and tragedies ("9/11 -- USA Attacked!"). In a first-class rendition from an invented fourth estate ("The National News"), Denenberg and Bing create a special newspaper memorial of Lincoln's death, with yellowed pages bound in faux-weathered maroon. The initial articles employ purple prose appropriate to the times ("After committing his cowardly and dastardly deed, John Wilkes Booth..."). Subsequent biographical sections, however, are more measured. With a nod to modern readers, they incorporate solid background material (such as a brief history of slavery and Lincoln's alleged shyness among women) that, while perhaps unnecessary for the 1865 audience, is crucial for the twenty-first-century one. Archival photographs and maps appear alongside portraits created by Bing to mimic period engravings, as well as artificial advertisements for products such as splint-bottom hickory chairs and fountain pen nibs. In an interesting blend of past and present, an extensive bibliography is located on the publisher's website; a birth-to-death timeline and an index are appended. Beautifully integrating content and form, this engrossing oversized (twelve inches by eighteen inches) book should serve both browsers and researchers well. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* This is likely the biggest book yet on Lincoln. Literally. Measuring 12 by 18 inches, it will certainly present some shelving challenges, but the headache is worth it. The concept is that this is a commemorative edition of The National News, published one year after Lincoln's death. The first few pages excerpt articles that appeared (fictitiously) in the days after the assassination, follows the ensuing manhunt (readers accustomed to news traveling at blog-speed will marvel at what was once considered breakneck), and recounts the swift execution of justice. Also included is an engaging, readable yet detailed account of Lincoln's life that, like most of Abe's biographies, morphs into a biography of the Civil War. The extraordinary format is designed to look like a nineteenth-century newspaper, complete with time-yellowed pages, multiple fancifully fonted headlines and subheads, woodcut illustrations, archival photographs, and even a smattering of entertaining period ads for all manner of old-timey products. While it has the potential for confusion if taken too literally, the splendid, unusual design of this book, which replicates and illuminates the period atmosphere, is an example of how high-quality bookmaking can turn a history lesson into an authentic experience. A detailed bibliography will be available on a Web site--Chipman, Ian Copyright 2008 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
THE format of "The Lincolns" may be aimed at young readers, but, given Candace Fleming's unerring eye for the dramatic quotation (with the Lincolns, there were a lot of those), this birth-to-death biography of Mary and Abraham is hard to put down even for readers who know the story. Fleming not only analyzes Civil War battles but also gives us plenty of interesting sidebars, like Mary Lincoln's recipe for white cake. Most people know that Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation, but not that he's also responsible for Thanksgiving an idea given him by the editor of Godey's Lady's Book, the magazine that young housewives like Mary read. The surprising thing about Fleming's book - which should especially appeal to its intended audience - is what we can only call the romance of Lincoln's early life on the frontier in Indiana and Illinois, a world that may seem highly exotic to American children marooned in affluence and technology, though Lincoln was determined to get away from it as fast as possible. ("Oh boys," he said on entering a soiree not long after moving to Springfield, "how clean these girls look!") Lincoln's father wanted him to clear the forest and work the fields, not read books, though "over and over Lincoln told his neighbors: 'My best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read.'" Lincoln apparently never forgave his father for that; at least he neither went to his father's deathbed nor attended the funeral. The circumstances that produced Mary Todd, around the same time and place, were very different. The daughter of a wealthy Kentucky family, Mary was a Southern belle, waited on by slaves, who departed from the cliché by loving books as much as Lincoln and having a mammy who had made their house a stop on the Underground Railroad. Another bond, no doubt, was the fact that both Abraham and Mary lost their mothers at an early age, though there the similarity ends: Abraham loved the widow his father married, while Mary despised her stepmother. "Love is eternal": portraits, and familiar headwear, from "The Lincolns." And then there was their love of politics - and their ambition. Mary thought Lincoln could be president even when her family called him "unsuitable," "not a warmhearted man ... and not capable." But to the friend who asked what she saw in "such a rough diamond of a man," Mary said, "The important thing is the diamond itself, clear and flawless under its film." The film was quite crusty. When Mary recalled her future husband's approaching her at a cotillion to say, "Miss Todd, I want to dance with you in the worst way," she finished the anecdote with "He certainly did." But, Reader, she married him; and turned into a hard-working housewife, dumped by her snobbish sisters and left alone a great deal with the children while Lincoln rode the judicial circuit. This life persisted until her husband won his campaign for Congress in 1847 and the family moved to Washington (unusual in those days; wives were normally left behind). Then conies the incredible nightmare that begins almost as soon as the victorious couple enter the White House, where personal and national calamities follow one upon the other in such rapid succession that a house Mary Lincoln entered with joy turns into a place she awakes in every day with "a sense of misery." Their story ultimately comes full circle in the most tragic way: after the Civil War and Lincoln's death, Mary wanders around Europe, returns to the United States, loses her son Tad to pleurisy, is put on trial for insanity (at her son Robert's instigation), finally returns to the house in Springfield in which she was married, where she sleeps on only one side of the bed to leave room for her husband and dies wearing a wedding ring inscribed with the words "Love is eternal." It is no wonder that the story of the Lincolns has become an almost religious narrative in which so many people find something different, a story that at this point seems as central to American identity as the Revolution. Lincoln was assassinated, don't forget, on Good Friday, and that is where "Lincoln Shot" begins. It is a book with a format almost as clever as that of "The Lincolns" (Barry Denenberg is given credit as chief writer; the illustrations are by Christopher Bing). At a time when e-books loom, you don't have to be in the fourth grade to enjoy holding an oversize volume printed like a newspaper of the time, with old photographs, illustrations and ads for hat makers inside. But that may be the book's chief virtue. Though the newspaper layout plunges us into the shock, anger and grief around Lincoln's assassination very effectively, the narrative also recounts the back story of Lincoln's life from childhood on, and so the concept does not really pay off again until we are in the Civil War. And rather than use actual newspaper articles from the time, the writers have supplied their own text - which, despite generous quotations from Lincoln's own prose, merely covers the ground. Still, that ground is mesmerizing. Headlines describing the Civil War battles are especially gripping: "Antietam," one reads in boldface. "Dreadful Carnage Greatest Battle of War - Rebel Army in Full Retreat - Leave Behind Dead and Wounded - Thousands Taken Prisoner - Complete Victory Wires McClellan." In fact Gen. George B. McClellan so exasperated Lincoln with his reluctance to pursue the Confederate Army that after McClellan sent his usual list of excuses for his inaction, Lincoln wired him: "I have just read your dispatch about sore-tongued and fatigued horses. Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the battle of Antietam to fatigue anything?" EVERY quotation from Lincoln himself is a reminder of the extraordinary nature of this man - not least of all his poignant vision of how the South should be treated after Appomattox: "Get the deluded men of the rebel armies disarmed and back to their homes. ... Let them all go, officers and all, I want submission and no more bloodshed.... I want no one punished; treat them liberally all around." Historians still, and will forever, debate the way in which Lincoln held the Union together - Candace Fleming's book means to show that Lincoln was opposed to slavery from childhood - but whatever one's own interpretation, both "The Lincolns" and "Lincoln Shot" recount a drama that lies somewhere between Charles Dickens and Sophocles. Though "The Lincolns" is five times as long, and stuffed like a fruitcake (to abandon the scrapbook metaphor) with fascinating morsels, both books are wonderfully readable, largely because the story they tell has no rival in American history. Andrew Holleran's most recent novel is "Grief."
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5 Up-A special memorial edition of "The National News," published a year to the day after Lincoln was assassinated, is how this oversize (12 x 18 inches) chronicle of Lincoln's life is positioned. The combination of a compelling story, engaging visuals, and large format distinguishes this work. Opening with a short note from the publisher that sets the context, the old-fashioned typefaces, stained and yellowed pages, 1860s advertisements, woodcut engravings, and period photographs all contribute to the antique appeal. Details of the president's death are followed by information about the assassin and his accomplices. Following these facts is the history of Lincoln's life, starting with his boyhood, moving through his early years in Illinois, family life with Mary Todd and political career, his rise to the presidency, and, finally, the Civil War, closing with Lee's surrender and the ominous statement: "Five days later Abraham Lincoln became the first president ever assassinated." Ornate running heads listing the time in history and boldface type featuring headlines of the day outline the story, and maps, photos, letters, historical posters, reproductions, and Bing's original artwork appear throughout. Perhaps in keeping with the news-rag style, the author did not include sources, although a chronology of Lincoln's life is added and a note directs readers to the publisher's Web site for bibliographic information. The back page features Whitman's "O Captain! My Captain!" Although too large for most library shelves, the book has great value, and its graphic quality makes it worth the search for space.-Janet S. Thompson, Chicago Public Library (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
