Lincoln's Gettysburg Address: a Primary Source Investigation #9

Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: a Primary Source Investigation, by Steven P. Olson

Hi! I’m Rembrandt! I read a book about Abraham Lincoln and how he gave the Gettysburg Address. This is a great book. It has pretty stars in it, and also old photographs. Abraham Lincoln was certainly an unusual but wonderful looking human. MomCat and I both like to draw and paint, and we would both like to go back in time and see Lincoln long enough to draw a pencil portrait of his lovely face.


The cemetery dedication was to honor the soldiers who died at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. A famous orator (“talks-a-lot person”), Edward Everett, spoke for two solid hours before Lincoln spoke. Everett’s speech had 13,000 words, and he had memorized all of it. Sheesh, I would have been curled up asleep in Lincoln’s hat. Lincoln’s speech only had 272 words. It did not last long enough for the photographer to get a picture of him speaking. But as Lincoln’s personal secretary said, it was “one of the world’s masterpieces in rhetorical art”[1] and was Lincoln’s description of the American dream.

Lincoln did not say “north” or “south” or “Pennsylvania” or even “Gettysburg” in his speech. He did say “people” many times and “nation” many times. Lincoln was talking not only to the 20,000 people in his audience, and the American citizens of his time, but to Americans of the future for as long as America exists. The speech has a timeless, epic universality.

MomCat told me that stuff above.

That’s nine books! Bye!!
Rembrandt
[1]Olson, Steven P. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. New York, NY: Rosen Publishing Group, 2005, p.[5].

The Ringlings: Wizards of the Circus #8

The Ringlings: Wizards of the Circus by Alvin Harlow

Hi! I found this really old book in the library that has a pretty cover of a circus. I like it because it has a big cat sitting on a tub. It also has a clown and a lady who can ride standing up on a horse. Momcat said I could do that without even breathing hard.

This book was published in 1951, the year my Momcat was born. My goodness. And she’s still alive? I was born in 2008. Of course it is already 2009, so I guess the years can add up quickly. Lots and lots of years.

This book is about how the Ringling Brothers, all seven of them, started a circus in Wisconsin in 1884, all on their own, with just a few wagons. One brother was already married; his wife made all of the circus costumes herself and the brothers did all of the acts instead of the circus people they hired later. It was hard to have any money left over, but they saved whatever they made from the very beginning and put it back into their circus to make it bigger and bigger. They were one for all and all for one. They became known for having an honest, clean circus. They bought circus animals and circus acts. In 1889, they bought circus train cars and then it was so much easier to move from town to town. They bought elephants! Don’t you just love elephants?

Momcat says our whole life is a circus, so I guess that’s why I love this book so much.


That’s eight books! Bye!!
Rembrandt

Blind Boone: Piano Prodigy #7

January 15th, 2009

Blind Boone
by Madge Harrah

I have been very busy playing with my Momcat’s Christmas decorations, but we did read another book together over Christmas vacation. Phew, don’t know if I’ll ever reach 25 books by May. Whatever May is. But we read Blind Boone: Piano Prodigy. I just love to walk on piano keys; don’t you? What a beautiful, interesting sound. Blind Boone was born a long time ago in 1864. His mom had been a slave in Kentucky. He got sick when he was a baby and it left him blind. So he had to work extra-hard to know things, like how to get places and who was talking and what was going on. He and his mom lived in farm country in Missouri but Blind Boone loved to go to town because there was a lot going on there. He really liked all the activity. He loved listening to the hymns in the Methodist Church and the spirituals that the black people sang. Blind Boone used to sit close to houses where other children were playing their pianos. He wanted to play the piano so much. One day a girl let him play her piano; he played the same polka that she had just played. Blind Boone could play by ear. He played the piano for the rest of his life. He played concerts. He was so popular. People (and cats, too) loved to hear him play. He played his own compositions. He mixed up ragtime with classical and black spiritual music. Nobody wrote down his songs, well, one oratorio but that was about all. It was so long ago that there was no way to record his genius. My momcat and I want to hear how he played. Blind Boone died in 1927.

That’s seven books! Bye!!
Rembrandt

Ordinary Genius #6

Ordinary Genius: The Story of Albert Einstein by Stephanie S. McPherson

My bean enjoyed reading this book so much that she read it to me. That was OK because he looked like he might like cats. And also because it would be fun to hear about another genius besides me.

Even though Albert Einstein was a genius, he was slow at lots of normal things. It took him a long time to start talking. He wasn’t interested in what the other boys were interested in, didn’t like sports, and he didn’t get good grades in school. As he got older, he didn’t understand typewriters, forgot the key to his apartment, and forgot to eat. But boy was he good at thinking. When he was little, he thought about how his father’s compass worked and about magnetism. He wondered how the world would look to somebody who was riding a beam of light. I like to lie in a beam of light, wow, that is living. Einstein figured out that there is a relation among light, space, and time. Only the speed of light never changes, only the space and time change. Then he thought about gravity and acceleration. Well, Einstein let all the other beans know about what he figured out and everybody was really, really interested. And they still are. Beans just love this stuff. Einstein’s life was interesting, too. I really liked this story. I could read some of it but I had to sit in my bean’s lap while she read most of it to me. Bye!! I am Rembrandt!!

Pete the Cat #5

November 7, 2008

Hi! I am Rembrandt! I read another book. I am so smart. This book was a gift somebody gave my bean [editor's note: A thoughtful classmate from Little Quilts' Stars Around the Garden class gave Rembrandt a signed copy of this book; thank you, classmate!]. This cat named Pete had shoes that he wore on his feet. Every time he stepped in something, like a pile of strawberries or blueberries or a mud puddle, it turned his shoes a different color. First they were red, then blue, then brown, but Pete didn't mind or cry. He stayed happy and stayed walking along. So no matter what happens, just stay happy. Now I've read FIVE books!! Bye!

Snowflake Bentley #4

October 2nd, 2008

Hi! I decided to sit still long enough to read another book: Snowflake Bentley, by Jacqueline Briggs Martin. This boy had a real first name: Wilson. He was born on a farm in Vermont so long ago! [bean's note: 1865]


They get so much snow there. How do the cats there survive? Wilson loved snowflakes. I love small things like that, too, like pieces of string and bits of dust. And dead bugs. Wilson got an extra-special camera (and cameras were still rather new inventions then) with a microscope to take pictures of extra-teensy things. He had to try different ways before the pictures came out all right, but then they were beautiful. Nobody else was doing anything like that, not even the cats, but Wilson didn't get much attention for it. It didn't matter, he could never stop thinking about his beautiful photographs of the snowflakes [bean's note: it's a good thing artists don't need much support].


That's four books! Bye!!
Rembrandt

The Cat Who Wouldn't Come Inside #3

September 8th, 2008

I read another book! This is #3. I found another book in the school library about a cat, called The Cat Who Wouldn't Come Inside, by Cynthia von Buhler. This is a true story. The cat came to the lady's porch but wouldn't come inside where it was warm. Look at the snow. The lady left milk on the porch for the cat. Every day she added something new and nice, but the cat would never come inside.

The lady added tuna (yum), a catnip mouse (fun), a rug (soft), yarn (pull), a chair (this is getting really good), a wall (to scratch), a fireplace (geez), and knitting needles (the cat knitted a scarf!).

The cat would never come inside, but since the house was mostly turned inside-out anyway, the lady joined the cat on the porch.

Bye, see you later! My bean is putting up your comments on my house at school!