Teedie: The Story of Young Teddy Roosevelt
Young readers familiar with the burly, hale Teddy Roosevelt who lived for adventure will likely be surprised to learn that as a lad he was a sickly, nearsighted asthmatic. Yet this privileged city kid, bully-prey, decided early on never to let his frailties govern his ambitions. Brown uses copious quotations to good measure as he flits through Roosevelt’s young life. (The quotes are unsourced, though a bibliography is appended, including Roosevelt’s autobiography.) Roosevelt’s words help impart the man’s predilection for sternly poetic hyperbole: to get fit, “he paddled ‘in the hottest sun, over the roughest water, in the smallest boat.’” The artwork is what one expects from Brown—vignettes of scratchy pen-work that capture humor and drama with equal ease—and show Teddy’s progression from a wispy twig into a big stick. While this account may not possess the laser-beam focus of Brown’s recent compact histories Let It Begin Here and All Stations Distress (both 2008), it does have a more kid-friendly hook in the young man whose determination trumped his boyhood shortcomings. Grades 1-3. --Ian Chipman