HOW THEY CROAKED: THE AWFUL ENDS OF THE AWFULLY FAMOUS — Review

Thought for the Day:

“When you finally start to write something, do not let yourself stop…even when you are convinced it’s the worst garbage ever. This is the biggest caveat for beginning writers. Instead, force yourself to finish what you began, and THEN go back and edit it.”


~ Jodi Picoult ~

Gifts for My Writer Friends:

Interesting reading at The Story Empire in the article HERE by Audrey Driscoll where she discusses The Perils of the Imperfect Main Character. I know my critique partners have sometimes complained that my characters are too perfect, but maybe I need to be careful about how I fix that problem.

What a nifty Narrative Nugget Janice Hardy has HERE about following rules when you don’t know why you are doing it.

Anne R. Allen has a great post HERE all about Secrets for Writing Page-Turners. Good advice and fun to read.

My trip to Minnesota was fine. I know it was for a memorial service, but my family knows how to celebrate a life well lived. My late brother-in-law was famous for his campfires and bonfires. He built them large and every chance he got. So on Saturday, we all got together at my great-nephew’s house, and he laid a great fire in the backyard. Matthew knew how to honor his grandfather. He tried to light the fire with a flaming arrow, but every time he shot the arrow, the flame went out before it hit the wood. So, naturally, he lit the fire by blowing lighter fluid from his mouth through the flaming arrow. It was dramatic and fun, but I can’t imagine it tasted good. On Sunday, we had a gathering where the family ran a slideshow of photos from Jake’s life. There were a lot of photos I had never seen. Then, many people told favorite stories about him. As memorial services go, it was pretty fun. It was great to see so many family members and old friends. I stayed a couple more days and visited. I do love Minnesota, but I’m glad to be home. I’ve had enough traveling the last several weeks to last me for a while.

I have had HOW THEY CROAKED: THE AWFUL ENDS OF THE AWFULLY FAMOUS by Georgia Bragg and illustrated by Kevin O’Malley in my TBR pile for quite a while, but I didn’t get to it until recently. It is such a fun book. What kid could pass by that cover and not pick it up.

Teachers generally recommend biographies of famous people for their students, and they teach history lessons, so kids learn a good deal about how people live, but death isn’t talked about very often. And, let’s face it, everybody dies. Some deaths are more interesting than others. In this book, author Georgia Bragg has taken a close look at the deaths of nineteen very famous people — King Tut, Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Christopher Columbus, Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, Pocahontas, Galileo Galilei, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Marie Antoinette, George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, James A. Garfield, Charles Darwin, Marie Curie, and Albert Einstein. She takes a very humorous approach. Even the table of contents makes for fun reading. Each person has a tag line such as Marie Curie — You Glow Girl and Napoleon Bonaparte — I Hate Islands. Each chapter is several pages long with some good history of the person before getting to the grim facts of the person’s death. Bragg doesn’t pull any punches. For instance, in talking about George Washington’s death, Bragg writes, “Dr. Craik used his advanced medical knowledge to give Washington the blister-beetle treatment. Highly poisonous beetles were ground up and smeared all over George’s neck. This made a field of blood blisters across Washington’s neck that Dr. Craik then drained.” And that is far from the worst of it. Kids will love all the gory details Bragg includes. Kevin O’Malley’s spot illustrations match the humorous tone of Bragg’s writing and add to the fun. This is a perfect book for a long car ride or to keep next to your chair for when you have a few mintues and need something quick to read. It will be a great way to engage reluctant readers. I highly recommend this book.

Please don’t forget to check for other Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday posts at Greg Pattridge’s blog HERE.