THEY WERE STRONG AND GOOD

I like the idea behind this book. Robert Lawson couldn't do anything really poor. But I found this disappointing — and I wonder whether children can be persuaded to read for themselves, and dig out the nuggets that are there. The book might have been called "They Made America" — for the idea back of the book is that everyone has ancestors who were strong and good, even if they were not famous, and that it was of such people that our real strength was made, through them the pattern of life was formed, people came together and built for permanency and the future, the America we know. It is an adult concept. He has attempted to bring it to human terms by using brief factual material from his own family story. But it just seems to lack the spark, and the jacket drawings are a trifle austere and forbidding — so it seems to me.