Hey, guys, wanna uprate a review on amazon?

[conuly]

This review is the ONLY critical review of the 1940 Newberry Winner Daniel Boone.

The review points out that the book has a lot of very racist commentary (and gives an example) and that it's not fair to call it a biography when there's no proof of any of this information - it could've been made up whole cloth for all we know.

I suspect that the review has been rated down so often (18 unhelpfuls out of 44 votes!) because... well, let's just look at another review:

The one star review this book received was unfair. The malicious reviewer revealed more about his own prejudices and the modern shame of unbridled political correctness than he did about the work in question.

I agree that the book was probably a product of its times (I haven't read it, though I'm assuming the quoted portions are accurate), but that doesn't mean that we have to read it now if we don't want to. Not every Newberry winner is, y'know, a winner. (I just read Ginger Pye the other day. Unusual in that not only does the dog NOT die, it comes back after being stolen. Boringest book I've read in a while, though.)

So, there aren't many reviews on this book. I don't want you to spam this review with thumbs up votes, but go read it, and vote it as helpful if you think that it is, in fact, a helpful review.

Comments

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Woah, I read that book in second grade - 1962, must've been - and I remember the attack part very vividly. Indeed, I see no reason for children to read descriptions of gratuitous violence of ANY sort, nor to watch it in visual media, nor to practice for it with either little toy guns or virtual grenade-launchers.