"The Remarkable Ronald Reagan"

  "Wait! He was a cowboy?! (*swoon*) I LOVE this president!"

We've always spoken highly of President Reagan in our household, but little Phoebe learned some new things about Dutch from Susan Allen's book "The Remarkable Ronald Reagan" (illustrations by Leslie Harrington).

Susan takes children through the life of Ronald Wilson Reagan touching on the highlights of his life and presidency. The book is about 20 pages long with a timeline, sample letters, and quotes included at the end. I found the ending part very interesting (especially the quotes), but the kids found the story more engaging. Jonathan said after I read a funny quote, "I can't laugh at that because I don't know what it means." :-) I love reading the "Important Things Ronald Reagan Said" though ~ he had such a way with words. One of my favorite quotes:

 "The American dream is not that every man must be level with every other man. The American dream is that every man must be free to become whatever God intends he should be." 

Reagan is admired and respected in our home, so it was easy for us to get into the story to learn about his life. He had such a colorful life too! Movie star, cowboy, athlete, speaker, politics, president. What an interesting person. The book doesn't take long to read, but we did a lot of stopping for discussion, so it may have been more memorable if we read it over several days, especially if used as a school book. Each set of pages covers a new topic which opened up lots of questions from my kids: Was Papa alive then? Wow, so World War II wasn't that long ago. What does divorce mean? Where is California? Is a governor like the president of a state? Did you actually watch it blow up? Why is that boy sitting on top of that wall? And so on and so on......

The toddler of the family enjoyed the pictures. He crawled into my lap to get a good look and join in the family reading time. I would definitely use "The Remarkable Ronald Reagan" as an extra in our home schoolroom. My thoughts on Living Books can be found here, and I would say this book qualifies. It was engaging, written by an author who obviously loves her subject, and didn't talk down to the kids.

This review is a part of a TLC Book Tour where many bloggers give their opinion of the same book.  You can find more reviews of this book here at TLC Book Tours.


*I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.


PS I can hear my kids playing in the room saying, "He's a little chubby; we'll call him Dutch!" Funny kids. They picked something up from the book at least.