105 Ways to Give a Book

My Brother Abe

My Brother AbeIt’s Abe Lincoln’s birthday today, in case you missed the recent Lincoln Book Blitz. Let me add one more review in honor of the birthday boy.

My Brother Abe, by Harry Mazer, should really be called Abe’s Big Sister, because it is certainly more about young Sally Lincoln than it is about her brother Abe. When the family is forced to leave their home in Kentucky, they take their most precious belongings and walk to Indiana territory to begin again. After an exhausting journey, they arrive at their new land, a wilderness with few neighbors. Abe and his father work to build a log cabin home as Sally and her mother tend to meals and other chores. It’s a difficult life that takes a tragic turn as sickness hits their corner of Indiana.

I enjoyed this book and the fictionalized look at Abe Lincoln’s early years. It read a lot like the Little House on the Prairie books. Actually, it read a lot like I remembered the Little House books, because when I read then again as an adult I was put off by the racial insensitivity and choppy text.

I was most impressed by the Lincoln family walking to their new frontier home. I can barely walk the mall without getting tired. Two hundred years back, I’d have been left by the side of the trail clutching my one pair of silk shoes. What do you think the equivalent of Prada was in the 1800s?

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