Saturday, October 18, 2014

_Lincoln's Grave Robbers_ by Steve Sheinkin

When I was in school, I really didn't dig history. Presented in standard (boring) textbook format, it didn't engage me. If you'd ever told me in 6th grade that I'd enjoy reading a history book, I would have thought you were crazy or from Mars.

Flash-forward many a year. I'm now trying to teach my children to enjoy history. Our history curriculum definitely makes it easy and interesting to like history. Add in books, both fact and fictional, related to the same time period, and history does become more than enjoyable.

Lincoln's Grave Robbers ties together historical details with which you will likely be familiar (things you can learn in a textbook) and more obscure facts that really flesh out the story. And it is a story. It's not a list of dry facts. It follows both those who sought to rob President Lincoln's grave and those who attempted to stop them. And it's suspenseful, and in that spirit, I won't give anything away.

I definitely give it two thumbs up with no reservations. Unless your child is highly, highly sensitive and squeamish. Really, it's not too gross, but the subject matter does involve graves and dead bodies. There is some discussion about grave robbers, in general, and why doctors robbed graves. My sensitive son read it and had no problems. He loved it.