On the cover of the book I read today, it says “A tale both true and otherwise of the life of Molly Brown.” A warning that on the pages inside we’ll find some tall tales, perhaps, in keeping with Molly’s outrageous reputation.
The Heroine of the Titanic, written by Joan W. Blos, and illustrated by Tennessee Dixon, is a short biography of the unsinkable Molly Brown.
The biography had to be short because there is not much info available on Molly Brown. Still, the author did a fantastic job, I think, of fleshing out the life of this lively woman.
She starts with her childhood in Hannibal, Missouri and takes us to her death 65 years later. And from the pages covering those 65 years a picture emerges of a woman who loved life and enjoyed the spotlight and who was undaunted by things that would have put other women in her day out of commission. Molly Brown earned the title “unsinkable” because she bounced back. That much is clear about her.
There is much to love about this book. The prose and poetry is very nicely done. The layout of the text and pictures are lovely. The illustrations are vivid and full of treasures and all evoke emotion. I LOVED the illustrations.
The story is laid out with dates at the top, moving us through Molly’s life. It was all organized well.
What I loved less about this book was the fact that I couldn’t find a strong theme. We start out with a fun-loving girl, a brave girl, a girl who sets out on a dangerous journey in search of silver and we end up with a woman alone, abandoned by her husband and remembering happier days, and yet we are told “Molly had had all she wanted out of life: had fun, been rich, done good.”
All she wanted out of life hadn’t satisfied her, I don’t think. I wonder if she ended up with the preacher saying, “Vanity, vanity, it’s all a chasing after the wind.”
Because she apparently drove her husband away and sent her children to boarding school and then left to travel around the world.
So we see a pattern in her life—she leaves her family chasing big dreams and she continues to chase happiness all her life. It is never apparent that she finds it. So she had had fun, been rich, and done good. And I guess the author couldn’t say much more about it than that because there is very little known about the woman. But I’m guessing she died a sad, lonely woman. There is no mention of her children in her latter days. I find that sad.
And I wonder if children, reading this book will come away believing that fun, money, and good deeds give us fulfilled lives or if they will see that family is more important than fun and money and even, yes, more important than good deeds to strangers. Charity, after all, begins at home.
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tags: joan blos, molly brown, Nonfiction Monday, review, tennessee dixon, the heroine of the titanic
The illustrations (on the basis of the frontcover) do indeed look wonderful. I wonder what it was about Molly Brown that appealed to Joan Blos so much she wrote this book.
.-= Zoe @ Playing by the book´s last blog ..Nonfiction Monday – The Planet Gods =-.
Thanks for stopping by, Zoe. I think that Blos might have chosen Molly because Molly is such a colorful, larger-than-life character. Molly Brown was flamboyant an had a zest for living and she’s fun.
But in the end, I think she was probably lonely.
I have to agree with you. In this day and age, we want to let children know that chasing after wealth is vanity. That losing your family might not be something to be proud of. I’m sure there could be a way to present Molly Brown and leave kids realizing that that might not have been the right path. But she does seem like an extremely fun character!
I’d never heard of Molly Brown until I read your post. I’m going to try to get a copy of this. I’m always curious about these hybrid biographies. Thanks for the review.
Sarah,
Thanks for dropping in.
I was wondering what you meant by hybrid biography and then I realized you were probably referring to my saying the book contains tall-tales. I think the cover was mainly speaking of Molly Brown herself, and the way she told tall-tales about herself. She liked to call attention to herself and she told stories about herself that stretched the truth. How much of that she did we don’t know.
But I don’t think the author was making up tall-tales. I think she was reporting what she’d dug up on the woman.
She talks about her research in the notes at the back of the book and says it was hard to find info on Molly.
[...] of the Titanic by Joan W. Blos. A picture book about the “unsinkable Molly Brown.” Reviewed by Sally at Whispers of Dawn. The Titanic: Lost and Found (Step-Into-Reading, Step 4) by Judy Donnelly. We have a copy of this [...]