Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Bad News for Outlaws by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson

Right now at the library where I work we are getting ready for an event called "Big Guy/Little Guy Wild West Adventure." In conjunction with the event I have a western cowboy display in one of the display cases and this is one of the books in the display. I love picture book biographies. They give just about right amount of information I want to know about a person. This one is about a Federal Marshal in the Indian Territories in the late 1800's. It is a fun book. It is written like a tall tale, with lots of superlatives and western jargon so it would be hard to read it out loud without assuming a western twang. But in reality, the facts portrayed in the book are true. Bass Reeves was an incredible marshal, using stratagem and even disguises to "get his man." He was also a religious man and always preached repentance to the criminals while he was bringing them in. He was a marshal for about 30 years, and brought about 3000 criminals to jail. In that time he only had to kill 14 of them. It is illustrated with great oils. It has more words per page than a typical picture book, so it takes maybe an hour to read, but it could be read in multiple sittings. It is a great choice for any little cow poke. (unpaginated)

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