Kids Are Americans Too by Bill O'Reilly, Charles Flowers Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Kids Are Americans Too
Book Review: Excellent read from a professional educator
Summary: 5 Stars
My Grandson loved this book and I can see why. It is written by an educator (O'reilly was a History school teacher) who knows how to explain complex material to children in a simple to understand style. O'reilly also has a Harvard degree and has a quick mind and wit that helps add to the enjoyment. This book, in the hands of a less talented person could be very boring, but it's not...it's great for the children for whom he wrote it!Book Review: A Must For CHildren Interested in Politics
Summary: 5 Stars
My 10 year old son absolutely loves politics because he hears my husband and I talk about it all the time. Since we are both on the same side we wanted to present our son with a fair and balanced introduction to the world of politics and power. This book does that. Mr. O'Reilly may ruffle feathers on his show but make no mistake, he loves his job. I could not have asked for a better explanation of rights and responsibilities of all Americans. My son feels like an active participant in the world of politics and now can substantiate his views. Book Review: O'Reilly haters alive and well!!
Summary: 4 Stars
It is amazing to me how so many people who hate and despise O'Reilly and anyone else like him have the time to write such long and careless reviews. I read the book and so has my 13 year old son and 16 year old niece. Although it may be a little simple at times for them, my niece especially enjoyed the book and said to me that it was one of the more eye opening pieces that she has ever read. To bring up phony accusations of O'Reilly, like the Harlem incident, which was totally taken out of context and a "Media Matters" concoction, where respectable men like Juan Williams are called "Happy Negroes" by other news orgs. is nothing short of despicable! The book is an excellent read, although a little simple for an intelligent adult at times, or maybe it is, but don't write a bad review on a book because you don't like O'Reilly. That in itself is childish!!Book Review: Unlike Libs & Dems, O'Reilly protects Kids with his push for Jessica's Law. Libs & Dems view ped*philes as victims with illness!
Summary: 3 Stars
O'Reilly's Kids are Americans, Too is, according to O'Reilly, the sequel to The O'Reilly Factor for Kids, and this sequel is worse than the first on account of a few inadequacies. Readable pages are ludicrously pathetic at about 130; this ranks Kids are Americans, Too lower in a literary task than junior novels. I can't believe O'Reilly claimed this book would be too difficult for some kids, as the double spacing is egregious, the indents on a page are so wide that much space is wasted, and some pages are divided into blurb-style conversations with O'Reilly, further lightening the book's literary weight.
This book's intent is noble, but mistrust remains about O'Reilly's success in satisfying his aim. The vast majority deals with court cases in the US as O'Reilly's thesis is kids have rights, too. It's a matter of balancing them against everyone else's rights--like parents, peers, teachers, etc.--and using court/legal precedents to determine if fighting for one's rights really does more good than bad sometimes. It'll startle O'Reilly defamers that his theme throughout most of the book is for kids to actually AVOID conflict by relying on negotiations and compromise, seeing as how his critics constantly accuse him of "bullying." Oh, never mind, most O'Reilly detractors don't even bother giving him a chance by fairly evaluating his opinions!!!!
O'Reilly spends much of the book counseling kids NOT to use the court system to settle disputes and fight for their rights, and this is, cogently, good advice because court costs enormous money, takes unproductively long, and clearly may end in unexpected decisions based on the subjective nature of judges. O'Reilly gives many an example of kids who had disputes with entities like schools and used alternative means to solve their disputes, ranging from meeting with the school to even going to the media. In this view, O'Reilly's giving kids sound, pragmatic advice which involves weighing whether something is worth the trouble in the first place.
O'Reilly's main focus of getting kids to understand their rights is regarding their schools because as he argues, they dominate children's lives as they spend the most time there during the day. He presents many cases of student-school disputes that anyone who watched The Factor over the years should be familiar with. Notorious cases he very breezily covers include the "Bong Hits for Jesus" case in Alaska; a case about a teenager being denied his intention of posing in his yearbook with musket; a case where a Muslim American haughtily rejected going to his school's graduation ceremony because it was held at a church; and a case where a teenager made public his high-school teacher's ideological comments after clandestinely taping them.
With each of the aforementioned cases, O'Reilly goes into breezy detail about each, highlighting the dispute among kids and their schools and then pithily giving analysis and how the dispute could've been solved easier. O'Reilly is also laudably perceptive in cautioning his young readers that there's unfortunately no black-and-white certainty with which one's rights can be enforced by the courts. This is due to the subjectivity of the legal process and the differing (and sometimes ideological) opinions of judges.
The blameworthiness of this book relates to O'Reilly, misguidedly, talking down to his own audience!!!! Throughout, he errantly uses phrases involving the term "kid" when addressing his audience; he flagrantly assumed he could "connect" with his readers and make himself sound "cool." Instead, he's derisive and hackneyed with that misused form of address.
Another criticism is O'Reilly's sometimes disoriented about who his audience really is. When he cites all the court cases involving primarily high-school kids, he insinuates that his audience is teenagers, yet the writing is so abominably primer-style and elementary, leading one to believe his audience is preteens or something!!!! Further devaluing O'Reilly is that he fails to push his teenage readership enough. With the schoolwork teens are expected to do--especially in private schools; I cannot expect that public schools with their teacher's union monopolies ever generate appropriate schoolwork from kids--O'Reilly should've authored a book up to par with a high-school reading level. I get the sneaking suspicion that he sort of winged it when writing this elementary book, not really caring about his young audience.
Finally, I need to confront earlier villains whom I discovered writing their illicit reviews ahead of me. As O'Reilly continually repeats the mantra that villainy needs to be confronted and exposed in American life, so, too, will I confront and expose reviewers Fellini and Gunfighter. These two are villains for libeling O'Reilly with charges that he's innocent of. For instance, Fellini libeled that O'Reilly teaches kids the "ACLU is Satan"; despite that the ACLU is indeed noxious to the US, O'Reilly never writes that in this book. Similarly, Gunfighter's a villain for libeling O'Reilly for writing this book to stir things up, yet for Pete's sake, this book is just a primer about constitutional rights and the Bill of Rights!!!!
Book Review: Good Civics Starter Book
Summary: 4 Stars
Most who castigate Bill O'Reilly are those who have preconceived notions of who he is by watching YouTube clips! Put those aside for a second are realize that he loves the USA and wants to protect kids. One of the ways to protect kids is to empower them with the knowledge of what the process was to get where we are and what kids can do to help this country move forward. This book successfully completes this mission more like a civics course than a political science course. My 12 year-old daughter tore through it in 2 days and loved it. "Not too easy, but not too hard," she said. It left her wanting to learn more, and that is the sign of a good teacher!