Review: Those Rebels, John and Tom

Those Rebels, John and Tom by Barbara Kerley

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



The stylized characterization based on historical sources was interesting. In a simplistic way, the writing complicated Jefferson's slave ownership. A caricature of King George reminded me of the short Schoolhouse Rock "No More Kings" video, and when I looked it up on youtube it looks like a lot of the illustrations were quotations of the animation. There's an old caricature that might hint at the origins. My favorite thing was the contrast between Jefferson and Adams in the writing, and Fotheringham's complementary illustration style. Like some others, difficult to tell it was computer illustration.

Marijka Kostiw was the designer on this book, and showed a clear sense of pacing and voice in how the text is sized, placed, and spaced on each page.

Again, get ready for 50% of kids' books to be genres like this under CCSS! Every publishing house in the country is going to try to be first to get all the basic informational text covered.



View all my reviews