Ben Franklin For Beginners
Ogline Design principal Tim Ogline is the author/artist/designer of Ben Franklin For Beginners from For Beginners, currently in its third printing. Ben Franklin For Beginners is a nonlinear middle-grade/YA oriented biography of Ben Franklin that discusses his life in topic oriented, richly illustrated chapters that detail Franklin’s achievements in numerous arenas. For Beginners is a graphically illustrated series that makes enduring topics accessible (yet not dumbed-down) and has published over fifty titles in the past twenty-five-plus years.
As the song says, most American youngsters ’don‘t know much about history.’ Indeed there is an epidemic of historical illiteracy out there in our public schools fully as troubling as the more publicized deficiencies in math and science. Tim Ogline’s beguiling book on Ben Franklin represents a kind of verbal vaccine that will address this national illness, giving us a Franklin that kids will find accessible and, as they would say, ‘awesome,’ while mature scholars will attest is the genuine article.
Ogline has done appearances and signings at a number of venues including The Franklin Institute, the Independence Visitor Center, Independence National Historic Park Franklin Court/Benjamin Franklin Museum, the Brooklyn Book Festival, the Collingswood Book Festival, several Barnes & Noble locations (Moorestown, NJ, Marlton, NJ, Rowan University, Philadelphia, PA, and the University of Pennsylvania), [words] Bookstore, the New York Comic Con, the Baltimore Comic Con, the Locust Moon Comics Festival, Philadelphia Charter High School of Architecture + Design, Farley’s Bookshop, Doylestown Bookshop, the Evergreens Continuing Care Retirement Community, and Spring Hills Assisted Living Community among others to promote the book.
The book has also been adopted into the curriculum at the Philadelphia Charter High School of Architecture + Design for the Ninth Grade and has been used in an interdisciplinary project among journalism, graphic novel, social studies, and design classes at the school. You can read more about this initiative as well as an appearance by Ogline at the school. (It has also been approved by the Board of Education at the Cinnaminson Middle School of Cinnaminson, NJ.)
Even Americans who think they know about Franklin will be surprised and awed to learn about everything that his mastery touched. This is a must read which should inspire Americans who want to know how this great country was built.