Book Review of Becoming Ben Franklin: How a Candle-Maker's son helped light the flame of liberty by Russell Freedman

 

1.      Bibliography

Freedman, R. 2013. Becoming Ben Franklin: How a candle-maker’s son helped light the flame of liberty. Holiday House. ISBN: 9780823423743

2.      Plot Summary

We look into the life of Benjamin Franklin and how important he was in making this country.  Starting as a 17-year-old apprentice and ending with a founding father of this country, Benjamin Franklin has a great influence on us all.  “His contributions to society include a library, a university, a fire company, a philosophical society, the lightning rod, the Franklin stove, and bifocal glasses.  And he helped give birth to a new kind of nation, ruled not by a hereditary monarch but by “We, the People.”

3.      Critical Analysis

Freedman has received the Newbery Medal, three Newbery Honor Medals, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, the May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture Award, and a National Humanities Medal. Freedman used three full-length biographies to pull reference for this book.  There is a selected bibliography at the back of the book where he explains his choices for sources.  The book goes through Benjamin Franklin’s life starting as a 17-year-old until his death in 1790.  There is a clear sequence starting with his ideas and the growing complexity of experiments and thought process.  Each picture that is in the book has a description and some have dates attached.  The back of the book has an index for where the pictures are located.  The table of contents at the front of the book has chapters 1-9 listed as well as a timeline and source notes.  The illustrations in the book complement the text and provide the reader with an image of what the town and people looked like during the 1700’s.  Following Benjamin Franklin’s life, you realize he had so many different ideas and how hard he worked to provide the best information he could to help the country.  This book keeps you drawn and wanting to know more, with a new problem to solve in each chapter.  The vocabulary used is beneficial to older students and provides them useful information on how Benjamin Franklin shaped the country.

4.      Review Excerpt(s)

Gr 4-8-There are numerous excellent children's books about Benjamin Franklin, including Robert Byrd's Electric Ben (Dial, 2012), Rosalyn Schanzer's How Ben Franklin Stole the Lightning (HarperCollins, 2002), and Candace Fleming's Ben Franklin's Almanac (S & S, 2003). Freedman, however, is a master at taking primary sources and turning them into engaging narratives that draw readers into the subject. While the three earlier books are highly visual presentations, this treatment is more about the text. Numerous paintings and engravings are included, but they are not the main event. Tracing Franklin's life chronologically, the author chose episodes that reflect how the young man, disgruntled with being his brother's apprentice, made a life for himself, and how he became the figure who is revered today. By describing the obstacles Franklin overcame in establishing his print shop in Philadelphia, Freedman delineates a clear path between his subject's early ambition and his ease with people to his success in business and then to his later roles as a diplomat, revolutionary, and public servant. Biographers make decisions about what to leave out as much as what to put in, but Freedman is consistent in connecting his discussion to primary sources. The result is an account that examines the whole of Franklin's remarkable life but does not overwhelm readers.-Lucinda Snyder Whitehurst, St. Christopher's School, Richmond, VAα(c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

5.      Connections

*I would challenge the students to investigate one invention or experiment of Benjamin Franklin and provide a how-to paper on it was created.

*After sharing this biography with students, I would have them research a founding father and write an essay on how they resemble Benjamin Franklin or not.