Jane A. Schott

This is a book about one of Oklahoma's own cowboys. Will Rogers was born in Indian Territory and grew up on his parents ranch. All he ever wanted to do was be a cowboy and rope. When he was eighteen years old he left military school and found a job on a ranch in Texas. One day after Will won a steer roping contest he wondered of people would pay to see him do roping and riding tricks. He then went to New York and was later hired to work in the Ziegfeld Follies. It was there that he did roping tricks and told funny stories. He loved making people laugh.
This was a nice to book to read about Will Rogers. I remember watching his movies with my Dad when I was young. I didn't know that he was part Cherokee Indian. I thought that was a interesting fact.
This would be a good book to read to the class and talk about people from Oklahoma and cowboys. My son is a steer roper. I could have him bring his roping dummy to school and let the students try and rope it.… (mehr)

Will Rogers is a brief biography of the life of Willie Rogers. Willie Rogers grew up on Indian Territory which later became Oklahoma. He grew up on a ranch and watched as the cowboys worked the cattle and that is all he longed to do with his life. His father, however, wanted his son to continue his education but Willie decided he was done with school and dropped out. He began to call himself Will and he went on to work on ranches in Texas but as the years passed the old way of moving cattle was slowly being replaced with new types of transportation. Will found himself using his roping skills yet again by going to roping contests. He later used his roping skills on stage and performed them as a show. After he married, he left the show stage of roping and movies.

I guess I didn't realize that Will Rogers was really Willie and I did not know that he was from Oklahoma! I liked the way this book was written and how it highlighted the major points in his life!

One classroom extension I would use off of this book would be to have the class discover their special talent and see how we could imnplement them into our studies! Another I would also use would be to have the students look into their ancestry and research someone that they found to be interesting and tell of the history.… (mehr)

This is our first encounter with the On My Own Biography series and I have to say, I am not impressed with this one. My initial impression of this book, after reading it is that it might work for beginner readers (1st grade), but it doesn't really work much beyond that. The book makes it sound like Fossey was a spoiled child who was jealous of a friend who got to go to Africa and decided she'd go on her own when she saved the money. The overall timeline and context of the biography is choppy at best and it's really hard to judge the passage of time, that is, to distinguish whether the events took place over days, weeks, months or years. The illustrations are good, if a little flat. There is a brief section at the end, separate from the "story" which tells readers about Fossey's death and a bit of other basic info, presumable which a teacher or parent who reads this book aloud to children could include or not include based on the child's age and ability to deal with that information. Also included is an extremely brief timeline of Fossey's life (10 "significant events/dates listed). We'll probably try at least one other in this series, but if there isn't a major difference we won't continue to read in this series. I give this a straight C. It was adequate for what it is trying to do, but it's a bit choppy and overall, it falls flat at inspiring interest in Fossey's life or work.… (mehr)