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I showed my copy of this book to my youngest grandson a few years ago. I can’t recall if he read it. I did in about fifth grade and I loved it. Tonight after getting through the prologue of the brilliant Rick Atkinson second volume of his history of the Revolutionary War I tried to find my copy. I was crushed to discover it probably got donated to Good Will in a fevered house cleaning in the last year or two. According to the advert above for a first edition from 1951 this copy was $62.00. I don’t know if mine was a first edition but it was the same front cover. I’d love to pass it around in a history class. The author was also an illustrator who happened to write another childhood favorite of mine about Ferdinand the Bull.
I got through most of the ten pages on Franklin in the prologue and then I had to put the book down. I felt like writing. Claudia and I were both reading books we gave each other for Christmas tonight instead of watching a French detective episode to help with my francais. I told Claudia I wanted the first and second books in Atkinson’s series. The first was a birthday gift on my birthday earlier this month. I got volume two for Christmas. While I was starting the prologue Claudia was equally fascinated by the prologue in another Pulitzer winner – 1929. We each shared gems from the book before I went searching for Ben and Me.
We listened to three long history tomes on our trip to Arizona and back in November. Book one, The English are Coming was the third and we got through twenty of its thirty hours before arriving in Duluth. Over the last month we got through some of the last ten hours and over the last two days as I put one of our Christmas Jigsaw puzzles together We managed to finish the book along with an epilogue that sent me immediately to volume two: The Fate of the Day. I plan to read 1929 as well which Claudia will finish faster than I will finish mine. Then I plan to go on to a book on Grover Cleveland because my knowledge of the Cleveland/Harrison years is spottier than I want it to be.
We are headed into the sesquicentennial of the United States. Our nation’s 250th birthday. This is something that both Donald Trump who knows nothing about history and I are both thinking deeply about. How will we as a nation come out the other end of this anniversary year with two more years of Donald Trump to weather?
I have been adding to my history reading with greater resolve since Donald Trump walked down his golden escalator in 2015. I have attempted to keep track of my “serious” reading since shortly after I got married. I made my reading list public on: Snowbizz.com but in 2017 I could no longer update my old webpage and my recent update on this blog here.
Reading history keeps me awake in the day when Trumplicans thumb their nose at knowledge in deference to their sleep walking and trampling on the beatitudes let alone the founding fathers. Of course this has been a continuing motivation for my snow sculpting. I’ve not explained it. I will tomorrow with two sculptures under my belt. Maybe I’ll try to write a column for the Reader. I’ve been silent there for half a year and I’m full to bursting with things to say.
