Helpful Score: 5
I really wanted to like this book. I was hoping for some great artwork and an inspirational children's book based on John Lennon's life and message of peace. Unfortunately, what I got was poor quality artwork and about 20 pages of text summarizing John's life and excerpts of Lennon-McCartney songs. I have to wonder who the intended audience is for this book. The material is too simplistic for adults or even teenage Beatles fans. Even the casual John Lennon fan will know most of the facts in this book. The story is too bleak and inappropriate for children, with the story mentioning John's drug use, the fact that his mother didn't want to take care of him as a child, and that he felt suffocated by fame and trapped with his first wife and a son. Why would you want to read that to a child?? In the illustrator's note, Bryan Collier says that he didn't grow up listening to the Beatles or John Lennon and that they were foreign to him prior to illustrating the book. This may explain why the pictures seem to miss the mark, often appearing cartoonish and elementary. It is obvious that the author, Doreen Rappaport, is a fan, but I can't imagine that she'd want to read this story to her grandchildren.
