Richie's Picks: Great Books for Children and Young Adults

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"The most important thing to remember about Thomas Jefferson is that he taught us the power of the word. He taught us that ideas matter -- that words beautifully shaped can reshape lives. Jefferson distilled into one remarkable sentence the essence of our creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...' Indeed, in the words he wrote he changed the shape of our country and became one of the most notable champions of freedom and enlightenment in recorded history. He had a vision of what the world should be.
"Jefferson speaks not only to Americans today but to people the world over -- particularly in the emerging democracies of Europe. In a sense, his words are responsible for the most liberal reforms, including the eventual end of slavery, the civil rights movement, and the suffrage of women.
"Even before his death, the language of the Declaration was appropriated by new claimants -- freed Blacks, abolitionists, early advocates of women's rights -- until it received decisive transformation by Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, when he said: 'We are a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.' Thomas Jefferson wrote that proposition." --from the Author's Note

Having been the oldest grandson -- and (once upon a time) a very well-behaved one at that -- I was regularly dropped off at my paternal grandparents' house on Mulberry Avenue in Garden City for some weekends during the school year and for a week at a time in the summer. The entrance to Hemlock Park was perhaps 25 steps from their back door, and I typically divided my time between The Park, and my grandfather's upstairs office overlooking The Park.

One day during the summer that followed the first coming of the Beatles, being a point in time when I was reading well enough to regularly consume an entire Beverly Cleary or Carolyn Haywood book in an evening, my grandfather, Rex, set up one of those portable card tables with the round metal fold-down legs, set out a yellow legal pad and sharpened pencils, and brought out a book that, at the time, appeared large enough to literally crush a small child.

It was a compilation of the writings of Thomas Jefferson. I was encouraged to sit down at the card table for the purpose of reading and taking notes on the Autobiography portion of the enormous book. Because I lived for pleasing my grandfather, I spent large portions of that week doing exactly that. And what I learned of that autobiography's author caused me to forever since maintain an affinity for all things Thomas Jefferson, a guy whose world-altering reading and writing abilities were complemented by the hundreds of diverse hands-on talents he also acquired during a lifetime that began, as Bober writes in THOMAS JEFFERSON: DRAFTSMAN OF A NATION:

"When William Randolph took his friend Peter Jefferson to visit his Uncle Isham, Peter met Isham's seventeen-year-old daughter Jane. Tall, slender, graceful, and elegant, she had a cheerful disposition and a fine mind. Two years later, on October 19, 1739, she and Peter were married. He was thirty-two; she was nineteen. She brought with her many slaves from her father's plantation. With this union, Peter Jefferson, an man without family prestige or social pretense, became identified with one of the leading families in Virginia. In eighteenth-century Virginia there were two distinct groups: the aristocracy, typified by Isham Randolph; and the yeomanry, who were, for the most part, industrious, belligerently independent, and instinctively democratic. The marriage of Jane Randolph to Peter Jefferson joined the two classes. Of these two strains would come the unique mosaic that was Thomas Jefferson."

Back in my Book Buyer days, I read a paperback reprint of Natalie Bober's 1988 Jefferson biography, THOMAS JEFFERSON: MAN ON A MOUNTAIN. I enjoyed it so much that I continued on to read her biography of Abigail Adams. A few years later, when Bober's COUNTDOWN TO INDEPENDENCE: A REVOLUTION OF IDEAS IN ENGLAND AND HER AMERICAN COLONIES, 1760-1776 was published, it easily made it onto my Richie's Picks Best of 2001 list.

Now Bober has done something rarely seen in trade publishing: a do-over. As the author states in her Author's Note, "History is an argument without end." Theories in which Bober believed two decades ago, regarding Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, were essentially proven false by DNA testing. And so armed with new knowledge and a new perspective, the author has now written a new biography of this most complex of forefathers.

"Peter Jefferson had been an example of industry and responsibility, but it was his love of learning more than anything else that was his legacy to his son. The only thing Thomas Jefferson wrote about his father -- almost sixty-four years later, when he was seventy-seven -- reveals what was most important to him throughout his life: '...being of strong mind, sound judgment, and eager after information, he read much and improved himself.' Books would become for his son the means to 'improve himself,' the keys to unlock the mystery of any subject he wanted to learn. Books would become the passion that ruled and shaped his life."

In wrestling anew with the question of how such an amazing man of ideas could create those immortal words about all men being created equal and, at the same time, condone slavery, Natalie Bober combines her skill for impeccable research with an unsurpassed ability to turn history into captivating story. And while that might sound cliche, the fact is that we are lucky if we discover a handful of YA nonfiction titles in a year that are immersed simultaneously in research and story to the degree found in THOMAS JEFFERSON: DRAFTSMAN OF A NATION.

Thomas Jefferson provided my first real inspiration to write about ideas and to internalize the ideals upon which America was founded. It has been truly fulfilling to, once again, spend a couple of days reading and writing about him.

Richie Partington, MLIS
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