My Day with Abe Lincoln

Rarely should one deploy the first-person when reviewing a book. And seldom does a scholar invite his seven-year-old child to assess the work. But here is a worthy exception to the rules. I savored the experience of reading with my daughter, Margaret, Jonathan W. White's delightful new children's book, My Day with Abe Lincoln. We all know Jon for his extensive publication record, his impressive contributions to the Lincoln bibliography, and his receiving the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize. Jon's latest foray into the Lincoln theme now targets a young generation in need of civic literacy and historical gratitude.Margaret and I enjoyed retreating to the far-off world of 1820s Indiana. We joined the book's main character, Lucy Millaway, a spunky third grader whose ambivalence toward the drudgery of school resonates all too well. When Lucy dons her brother's magic stovepipe hat, she teleports to Lincoln's boyhood home in Spencer County. Confused as to her whereabouts, Lucy meets a gangly adolescent and his sister strolling to their local prairie school. Lucy soon realizes that she is in the company of the famous future president and his sister, Sarah. Lucy joins Abe and Sarah in their one-room schoolhouse led by their demanding teacher, Mr. Crawford. Children of all ages together recite their readings and decipher their arithmetic. Abe even introduces Lucy to one of his favorite books, The Columbian Orator, which he often read aloud better to remember the prose. Because I am hardly blessed with Lincoln's photographic memory, I told Margaret that I often partake in a similar exercise. She promised also to attempt the method.As Lucy's bewildering but captivating day with Abe and Sarah continues, she witnesses the young boy wrestling in the schoolyard and struggling to spell words correctly in a spelling bee. Lucy, Margaret, and I were struck by the ordinariness of the young Lincoln, his sister, and his friends. Life in frontier Indiana was hardly romantic. Readers receive little in the way of predicting Lincoln's unlikely rise. He was rather a normal if not curious and even somewhat odd boy who reads books on his back with his feet propped up on tree trunks. At one point, Margaret asked when he would become president. But the book gives little indication. We were treated instead to Abe's unremarkable but formative western life.When the school day concludes, Abe and Sarah invite Lucy back to their family cabin on Little Pigeon Creek. Along the way, the children recount stories from their early years in Kentucky. Lucy soon meets the Lincolns’ beloved stepmother, Sally, who insists that the young girl stay for a dinner of roasted squirrel. As Lucy reads some of Abe's scrawled poetry, in walks the family patriarch, Thomas Lincoln. Curt and uninterested in his son's love of reading, Thomas scoffs when Abe recounts to Lucy his favorite tales from The Arabian Nights and Parson Weems's Life of Washington. After dinner, Thomas recalls a childhood story in which a Shawnee killed his father. As the evening ends Abe absentmindedly places the magic hat atop his head, transporting Lucy back to the present. Lucy returns home reinvigorated by her trip to the past, scouring her school library for books about Abraham Lincoln.When we finished the book, I asked Margaret what she thought. She loved it. Why? Abe and Sarah appear as normal children, not distant, unapproachable figures from the dusty pages of history. The book resembles the revered Magic Treehouse series, which animates the past not with schlocky hagiography but rather with challenging yet approachable entrées into historical events. The book is thus not unlike the works that a young Lincoln read. Yes, Weems's Life of Washington is hilariously inaccurate. But it fired in Lincoln's developing mind a deep appreciation for the American founding, an abiding gratitude that underwrote his antislavery political philosophy. Without reading such works as a child, Lincoln might well have matured very differently.Except for a magic stovepipe hat, all the incidents in My Day with Abe Lincoln are real, drawn from the documentary record. But this is not a book simply about fun sleepy days on the nineteenth-century frontier. Rather, the events featured all convey important lessons about Lincoln's life and virtues. We meet a Lincoln who, at a formative age, pursued avenues that might deliver him from an impoverished upbringing. From his hard work to his fervent reading, the boy lives as the man whom he will become: “the prudent, penniless, beginner in the world” who strove for something better.1In our decadent age of prosperity, the book teaches children that the independent life is not given but is rather pursued and cherished. For much of human history, Lincoln's obscure, toilsome childhood was the norm. As he came of age, he treasured the chance to rise beyond his humble birth, to pursue upward mobility, to own himself. He did not have to emulate his father, the semi-illiterate subsistence farmer. Why? From the lessons he gleaned in reading Parson Weems's tales of the American Revolution. In his own words, Lincoln regarded himself an embodiment of the sentiment in the Declaration of Independence “giving liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world, for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.”2 From that reading of history flowed all Lincoln's political sentiments, elevating him to the presidency.After our reading, Margaret and I enjoyed the chance to talk effortlessly about history. Books such as Jon's allow children a lively way to engage the essential questions of nationhood especially during a time of political fracture and gross ingratitude for the American past. For parents and teachers alike, the book comes with a helpful guide, offering historical context and discussion questions. I would be also remiss not to praise Jon's former student, Madeline Renaux, whose spirited illustrations bring the wonderful story to life.