Betsy Harvey Kraft

Betsy Harvey Kraft has certainly done her research for her account of Mother Jones, which you can tell from her writing. Her research is not evident in the form of a bibliography as the author chose to leave this out of the book. While there are a couple of suggestions for further reading, readers have no sense of where all of this information came from.

This book is meant for children, but I find it to be a very huge volume for a child. I found the book to be a bit too big and detailed. If I used this in a classroom, I would use only certain chapters at a time to add stories found in textbooks.

Mother Jones will come up in many units in a Social Studies class. She is a big part of the labor movement and women's history. This was not my favorite account of her, but it is a useful text to have on hand to enrich units.… (altro)

Lots of great illustrations and photographs in this bio of Mother Jones. Born in Ireland, she came to America as a young child and moved all over the nation; Memphis, Chicago, Pennsylvania, etc.

She lost her husband and all four children to Yellow Fever in Memphis in 1867. She lived through the Great Chicago Fire, and ended up working tirelessly for the rights of common laborers.

An interesting book, it does not bring the reader especially close to the personal Mary Harris, and the information is presented quickly and is rather confusing.

The magazine, "Mother Jones" was created after she died and was named for her. Currently, the magazine is described as, "A bimonthly magazine of investigative journalism that exposes the evils of the corporate world, the government, and the mainstream media."

Book includes an index and further notes.… (altro)