Famous Phonies

Famous Phonies
by Brianna Dumont

Famous Phonies

Grades 5 & up

Nonfiction

Fantastic Fugitives

Book Summary:
William Shakespeare, Confucius, Hiawatha, Pythagoras, and The Turk are just a few individuals featured in this book's chapters about misunderstood historical figures.

Book Review:
Great topic, and good profile selections. I think this book could be a great springboard for students to learn more history and more details about famous figures, and it does an excellent job illustrating misconceptions and outright false information. However, there are so many opinionated asides throughout the book that I really wanted to go to specific footnotes for sources. The tone is intended to be conversational and humorous, and I think it would appeal to many middle school kids, but they'll need to be critical thinkers to be able to follow the sarcasm; some of the references are unlikely to click with younger readers. This would be an excellent model text for students to use to research and write their own profiles of contemporary people, or of urban legends.