Teddy Roosevelt

Teedie: the Story of Young Teddy Roosevelt
by Don Brown
32 pages; ages 4-7
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017 (reprinted)

themes: nonfiction, biography, presidents

Ten-year-old Teedie played with his sisters and brother in their fine house on Twentieth Street.

He loved being at home, but he also loved summers in the country when he and the other kids climbed trees, built wigwams, and hunted frogs (unsuccessfully). 

What I like about this book: President Teddy Roosevelt is one of my heroes, so I'm always keeping my eyes peeled for a fun book about his childhood. This one fits the bill. Author Dan Brown shows Teddy (called Teedie by his family) as a youngster plagued by asthma -  in the mid 1800s they didn't have inhalers - and so was tutored at home. He was insatiably curious, collecting skulls and sketching birds. He spent hours lifting weights and rowing to build up his body, and loved riding horses and hunting.

As an adult he did amazing things to make our country a better place to live. "America will not be a good place for any of us to live in if it is not a reasonably good place for all of us to live in," he said. So he fought big business, established national parks and wildlife preserves, built the Panama Canal, and won a Nobel Peace Prize. 

Beyond the Book:
Take a virtual tour of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park in the Badlands of North Dakota. Here's the NPS video.

Play a game of Tic-Track-Toe. Roosevelt was a hunter, so playing this game requires animal track tiles - you can download a template here. And you can visit this website for more National Park activities.

Biographical information (and short video) about TR over at the Ducksters.

Today is PPBF (perfect picture book Friday), an event in which bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's site. She keeps an ever-growing list of Perfect Picture Books. Review copy provided by publisher.