The illustrations to Abraham Lincoln by Ingri and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire are quaint color pencil, which matches the folktale-like subject matter. They don’t wow me as other Caldecott winners do, but as the 1940 Medal Winner, I think the art in d’Aulaires’ biography about Lincoln are sufficiently award-worthy. Abraham Lincoln reads like a novel; it was easy to approach and would welcome even younger children into the fun traditional stories about our 16th president.
However, I did have two disappointments. First, there is no afterward clarifying which of the stories are suppositions and which are known facts. I suspect most of the details are not actually known. Second, the story does not share the account of Lincoln’s death; it ends with “The Civil War had come to the end. …”, with some descriptions of how the people cheered him. This gave it an unbalanced feel and the “fairy tale” of Lincoln’s life feels completely false. In the end, I enjoyed reading Abraham Lincoln, but I certainly hope there are more useful biographies about him.
