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The Discovery Books were a series originally published by Garrard Publishing Company. This series of junior biographies are a bit like the Childhood of Famous Americans series, but with more history and less fiction. In the Discovery books, invented dialogue that is sometimes based on known sayings of the biographical subject is added to help the narrative flow better as a story. Probably the most invented dialogue is in the short childhood part of each book but most of the book is devoted to the person’s adult life and accomplishments. In the Childhood of Famous Americans series, almost the whole book is the invented childhood, with only a chapter at the end about the person’s adult life.
Well-known authors were recruited for the original Discovery Books series – more on that below – who tell the story of a famous person in simple, vivid language. We had some of these books in our home school library. Various illustrators contributed their talents to this series, producing many lovely and striking images that illuminate the text. These books are a great introduction for an elementary school child who can read for himself the history influenced by, and the character of, the subject of the biography. Hopefully this will both spark an interest and provide a framework for further exploration of this person and his or her place in history.
Plumfield Press is starting to revive the titles in this series that have moved into the public domain. They have used computer graphics to brighten up the illustrations and have otherwise kept the text and appearance the same - why try to improve upon success? Plumfield’s reprinted editions are well-bound paperbacks that use glossy white high-quality paper. Their first four titles in this noble reprinting adventure are reviewed next.
Benjamin Franklin: Man of Ideas, by Charles P. Graves, tells the story of this great American, who had a lively sense of humor, abundant physical and mental energy, and a wonderful desire to improve himself and to help others do so, too. His marvelous inventiveness made him world-famous for both basic research in the nature of electricity and for practical inventions that improved people’s lives. Franklin’s writing, over many decades, helped form the American culture of freedom. I have recently read Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography and recognize many topics in this Discovery Book. Graves has done an outstanding job at translating the basics of Franklin’s life into 64 pages of simple yet engaging text. Someday I hope a child reading this beginner biography of Benjamin Franklin will be led to read the Landmark book about Franklin and ultimately his own Autobiography. The author, Charles Graves, was a well-known author who wrote other Discovery Books and many other books of information for children.
Florence Nightingale: War Nurse was written by Anne Colver, a well-known author who wrote a successful series of horse fiction books and a number of non-fiction books for children. The story of Florence Nightingale is quite a touching one. Miss Nightingale came from a rich family but all her life she only wanted to make the world a better place in regards to caring for sick people, driven by the gospel. In the first half of the 19th century in Great Britain, the nursing profession was essentially non-existent and hospitals were generally not great places for getting well. Florence Nightingale almost single-handedly forced this situation to change through her unwavering commitment to being a trained nurse herself and promoting the training of nurses. The Crimean War, between England, Turkey, and Russia, made her reputation. After reports came home of the lack of medical care for wounded British soldiers, she took forty women nurses over to the Crimea, through the support of some friends who were high-up in the British government. Through her leadership, ingenuity, hard work, and compassion, she forever changed the role and image of nursing. When she came back home when the war was over, she was able to open a nursing school to train women nurses and thereby greatly improved the care of hospital patients in Great Britain. She was an inspiring woman and this Discovery Book is an inspiring account, for younger students, of Florence Nightingale’s life.
George Washington Carver: Negro Scientist was written by Samuel and Beryl Epstein. The word “Negro” in the title was not meant as an insult. At the time this book was written, this word was merely descriptive. It has been replaced today by “African-American.” Plumfield Press has chosen to keep the books as-originally-published in their reprinting process. The Epsteins were a husband and wife writing team, who wrote more than 50 non-fiction books for children. They wrote many of the Real Book series and the First Book series, which were focused on areas of knowledge and technology, not biography. Samuel and Beryl, using the pen name of Bruce Campbell, also wrote the Ken Holt mystery series, which was something like the Hardy Boys series but much better written and plotted.
George Washington Carver is one of my scientific heroes, who was a scientist, inventor, and bioengineer. He was a high-ranking biologist who made new discoveries of the basic properties of common agricultural products such as sweet potatoes and peanuts. He was an outstanding inventor who dreamed up hundreds of useful applications of these farm products. He was a creative bioengineer who developed the chemical and physical processes that turned sweet potatoes and peanuts into these products. I have toured Carver’s laboratory at Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and it is marvelous what this brilliant man, born a slave who fought for a college education, accomplished without modern instruments! He was given a Bible as a teenager and learned to treasure the Word of God. Later in his life, he said “The secret of my success? It is simple. It is found in the Bible, ‘In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths (Proverbs 3:6).’” The Discovery Book about George Washington Carver tells the inspiring story of this great man, in a simple way for 1st or 2nd grade readers, who was born a slave but went far beyond that humble beginning to earn a place as one of the greatest Americans.
John Paul Jones: Sailor Hero, by Stuart Graff, who wrote several other non-fiction children’s books, tells the story of the man who, more than anyone else, built the foundations of the US Navy and its tradition of service and victory. Born and raised in Scotland, John Paul, as he was originally known, went to sea at age 14 and never looked back. He added the “Jones” surname when he needed to lie low at a period in his life and then kept the name for the rest of his life. His famous saying, in response to the captain of the British ship Serapis who called on him to surrender, was “I have not yet begun to fight!” This quote, mentioned in the Discovery Book, nicely sums up John Paul Jones’ life and character. He died at a fairly young age in France but his body was brought home many years later to be interred in a cellar crypt beneath the chapel of the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, an institution that Jones said was needed many years before it was actually established. I have visited that crypt, guarded by midshipmen 24-7. It is a solemn place, especially as one remembers the life and accomplishments of John Paul Jones. James Fenimore Cooper lightly fictionalized Jones’ adventures in his famous book, The Pilot, which is well worth reading for a high school student. Samuel Eliot Morison, a famous naval historian, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1959 for his biography of John Paul Jones. These are both books that hopefully will be read by someone someday who was first impressed by John Paul Jones’ story in this Discovery Biography.