From School Library Journal Grade 4-8–Considering the interesting, unusual lives these three larger-than-life heroes led, these biographies are surprisingly bland and uninspiring. Haugen recites events while failing to create a sense of who Hamilton, Allen, and Jones really were, and also fails to adequately summarize their contributions and significance. Her scholarship is suspect, given the number of errors and omissions as well as the large number of notes that are incorrectly cited and/or quoted. The maps are incomplete, and too many illustrations are old-fashioned and irrelevant. For Hamilton, use John Rosenburg's thorough, fascinating Alexander Hamilton (21st Century Bks, 2000); Veda Boyd Jones's Alexander Hamilton (Chelsea House, 1999) is adequate. Elaine Marie and Arthur B. Alphin's I Have Not Yet Begun to Fight (Carolrhoda, 2004) is the clearest and best written for this age level on Jones, but unfortunately ends after the Revolutionary War and uses modern drawings rather than contemporary illustrations. Alison Davis Tibbitts's John Paul Jones (Enslow, 2002) is passable but dull. Acceptable, error-free titles on Ethan Allen are hard to come by.–Ann W. Moore, Schenectady County Public Library, NY Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Read more About the Author Brenda Haugen started in the newspaper business and had a career as an award-winning journalist before finding her niche as an author. Since then, she has written more than 50 books and edited hundreds more, most of them for children. A graduate of the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, Brenda lives in North Dakota with her dog, Alice, who chose Brenda when she went to the Humane Society thinking she was there to adopt another dog. Read more
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