Ghosts of the Civil War

My 9yr old loves this book and wants to get another in the series. It has a lot of information in it, but can be difficult to navigate through it as the pages are so busy - both a plus and a minus. Great book and we will probably get the Ghosts of the Whitehouse too.

This picture book for upper elementary has fascinating detailed pictures and printing. The book has a current narrative, which takes the reader into history. The learners may enjoy the fantastic images.

I read "Ghosts of the Civil War" as I am working my way through Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals," so the idea of being able to go back in time, as it were, to talk to these people when they were alive is appealing to me. Of course, I have been thinking of what could have been said to Abraham Lincoln, George B. McClellan, or anybody else who appears in these books that could have shortened the war and saved hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides. However, in her fascinating book, writer-artist Cheryl Harness sends her young surrogate Lindsey back to the past in the company of Willie Lincoln to find about what the Civil War was really about. The idea is that Lindsey has been dragged by her parents to a Civil War re-enactment (I have been to couple of those in Illinois and at one of them Abraham Lincoln showed up). Lindsey thinks the whole thing is dumb, that there is nothing civilized about a rotten war, and has no idea why the North fought the South. But then she sees a sad little boy who seems lost. He explains that he was just wondering why future folks were playing out the War of the Rebellion. When Lindsey wonders why people in the United States could be so dumb as to war against each other, the boy explains it was because the states where not united at all, and proceeds to show her. The next thing she knows, Lindsey is watching a beardless Abraham Lincoln giving his "House Divided" speech at the state capitol in Springfield, Illinois on June 16, 1858. Harness provides a two-page spread that show the entire country divided into free states, slave states, and U.S. territories. Off to the side a list of key dates on the road to the Civil War are laid out, while Willie explains to Lindsey how the national was like two different countries, with factories in the North and farms in the South, a distinction emphasized by how Harness illustrates what is happening in each state. This sets up the basic approach of the book. Each two-spread spread shows a particular scene, from the Lincoln-Douglas debates and the First Battle of Manassas to Pickett's Charge and the Gettysburg Address. The people shown in the pictures make interesting comments (e.g., the old woman at Lincoln's inauguration who saw George Washington sworn-in 72 years earlier at New York and thinks it would break the first president's heart to see his nation breaking apart), while Willie explains key points and Lindsey responses to what she sees and hears. I was wondering why Harness picked Willie to be the guide rather than Tad, seeing as how the former died in 1862 and the latter did not die until 1871. But there is a point where Lindsey knows what is going to happen next and Willie warns her that things cannot be changed no matter how much they might want, and the conceit does off a chance for father and son to be reunited in the afterlife (it might be a bit much, but I can appreciate the sentiment). The key thing is that at the end Lindsey is able to tell he