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The Many Lives of Benjamin Franklin
A picture-book biography of one of our greatest statesman, writers, and inventors follows Franklin's life from his childhood days in Boston to his ambassadorship to France
32 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 1988
About the author
Aliki
191 books77 followersAliki has written and illustrated many books, both fiction and nonfiction, loved by readers throughout the world. The books were inspired by a word, an experience, or the desire to find out. Aliki lives in London, England.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 23, 2013
This is one of the best Benjamin Franklin books I've read. It's a bit easy, but it's very informational and fun to read. The comics make just retell what the paragraph says.
June 10, 2018
A pretty fun way to learn facts.
This may be a little busy for younger kids, but it's good. It's a fairly basic biography of Benjamin Franklin. Aliki's style is really interesting. There's the regular text, of course, but the illustrations are almost like a comic book, where they are captioned and often have word balloons. There's a lot of interesting stuff here. There's a lot of text, but it's not necessarily the main text; it's kind of auxiliary text.
The story goes through Benjamin Franklin's life. He learns to be a printer with his older brother, leaves Boston, goes to Philadelphia, becomes a becoming a printer there, and then starts his own printing shop. He publishes a newspaper and writes Poor Richard's Almanack. He gets married. At age 42, he retires to become an inventor and scientist and does a whole bunch of other stuff. Then he works for American independence, the war is fought, and then he helps write the Constitution.
He's a very fascinating character. There's definitely a lot of information-- not necessarily much of a story, but kind of an information dump. But if you're trying to get this information across, I can't think of a more interesting way to do it then with the text accompanied by the pictures like this. I really like the style. It works really well.
Message: Benjamin Franklin was a cool dude.
For more children's book reviews, see my website at http://www.drttmk.com.
This may be a little busy for younger kids, but it's good. It's a fairly basic biography of Benjamin Franklin. Aliki's style is really interesting. There's the regular text, of course, but the illustrations are almost like a comic book, where they are captioned and often have word balloons. There's a lot of interesting stuff here. There's a lot of text, but it's not necessarily the main text; it's kind of auxiliary text.
The story goes through Benjamin Franklin's life. He learns to be a printer with his older brother, leaves Boston, goes to Philadelphia, becomes a becoming a printer there, and then starts his own printing shop. He publishes a newspaper and writes Poor Richard's Almanack. He gets married. At age 42, he retires to become an inventor and scientist and does a whole bunch of other stuff. Then he works for American independence, the war is fought, and then he helps write the Constitution.
He's a very fascinating character. There's definitely a lot of information-- not necessarily much of a story, but kind of an information dump. But if you're trying to get this information across, I can't think of a more interesting way to do it then with the text accompanied by the pictures like this. I really like the style. It works really well.
Message: Benjamin Franklin was a cool dude.
For more children's book reviews, see my website at http://www.drttmk.com.
October 17, 2023
Very light on text but still informative.
July 25, 2008
I'd like to check out Aliki's other biographies
February 9, 2014
Awesome book
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews