Ben Franklin's Big Shock

May 1, 2006
K-Gr 2 -These beginning readers are physically attractive, with large, competently done, full-color art, but they don -t contain much factual information or cover any new territory. Jango-Cohen devotes all 48 pages to imagining what it might have been like for Franklin to discover that lightning is electricity with his legendary kite experiment, yet this is a tiny part of his amazing and varied life. The book is catalogued as nonfiction, but it is heavily fictionalized. Ransom covers four months in 1608 during the very beginnings of the settlement of Jamestown, VA. Although Sam was a real person who worked for John Smith, the story imagines what may have happened to him in these early days. The one-page afterword gives much more actual information about the colony -s progress and the boy -s fate, all of which would have made this book more interesting and informative had it been explored further. Stick with Rosalyn Schanzer -s "How Ben Franklin Stole the Lightning" (HarperCollins, 2003), Jean Fritz -s "What -s the Big Idea, Ben Franklin?" (Putnam, 1976), James Cross Giblin -s "The Amazing Life of Benjamin Franklin" (Scholastic, 2000), or Elizabeth A. Campbell -s "Jamestown: The Beginning" (Little, Brown, 1974; o.p.)." -Kate Kohlbeck, Randall School, Waukesha, WI"

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