Reviews here and there

David Elzey at the excelsior file has a review of What To Do about Alice?: How Alice Roosevelt Broke the Rules, Charmed the World, and Drove Her Father Teddy Crazy, by Barbara Kerley, with illustrations by Edwin Fotheringham. David calls it “a great book” and “a tidy biography of a colorful, spunky girl who happens to have been real.” Read the rest here.

By the way, in my previous post about the new Alice Roosevelt biographies for adults and children, Barbara Kerley stopped by the comments to say,

Thanks so much for introducing Alice to your blog readers. Alice captivated me from the moment I ‘met’ her (in the pages of a history magazine at my local library). I thought you’d be interested to know that I am putting together an Alice section in the “For the Classroom” page of my webpage — activities that teachers and homeschooling families can explore to extend the book. I plan to have it posted by the book’s publication date of March 1st. (Yikes! I better get busy!) My website address is: http://www.barbarakerley.com.

Stay tuned and don’t forget to check Ms. Kerley’s website after the beginning of next month.

Also at excelsior file recently: not a very good book, but a very good, pulls-no-punches review.

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Michael Barton at The Dispersal of Darwin has a thorough review, with illustrations, of The Voyage of the Beetle: A Journey around the World with Charles Darwin and the Search for the Solution to the Mystery of Mysteries, as Narrated by Rosie, an Articulate Beetle by Anne H. Weaver, illustrated by George Lawrence (which I’ve mentioned here, here, and here). Michael also mentions a review of the book at John Hawks Anthropology Weblog, which is actually an interview with author and anthropologist Anne Weaver. Among other things, Dr. Weaver mentions the book’s website, which she says she hopes “will evolve into a substantial resource for teachers, with classroom activities as well as an ‘Ask Rosie’ e-mail feature”.

Colleen Mondor at Chasing Ray has read Voyage of the Beetle at home and writes, “I most heartily recommend Voyage of the Beetle, a book I just finished reading to my son and he adored. It’s very funny and also explains Darwin’s theories in a way that even a six-year old could understand. (It’s written for 9-12 yr olds.)”

I also found this recent newspaper article about the book, “Santa Fe author Anne Weaver hopes her book about Darwin gets kids stoked about science“

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