Reviews for Books Appeal: Get Teenagers into the School Library

The average rating for Books Appeal: Get Teenagers into the School Library based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-03-13 00:00:00 Joe Coffey I read the 1987 first edition; this was updated once a decade later, so perhaps some of my criticisms don't apply to that later edition. This volume in any case consists primarily of an alphabetical listing of all American TV western series from 1946 to 1978. It does seem to be complete in it's listing, and I don't think it gets many of the facts wrong; and there seems to be little competition when it comes to a "handbook" sized book on this subject. That pretty much exhausts the positive elements of this book and review, unfortunately. First of all, as another negative review on Amazon notes, the information included on the minor series is often very skimpy - "Wrangler" may have only lasted part of a season in 1960, but the information we get - the fact that the main character was sometimes a cowhand, sometimes a gunslinger - is so minimal that it probably could be mistaken for a number of other shows if we weren't given the name of one star. Even programs that were longer running and fairly important in the history of the genre get short shrift too in some cases - Dick Powell's "Zane Gray Theatre" ran for six years and spawned six further TV series, one being the 2-season "Trackdown" which itself had a very successful and famous spinoff, "Wanted: Dead or Alive". Though these shows are listed in the book, their relationships to each other are completely ignored. My major caveat, though, is in the crediting of the shows. The author mentions the leading star or two, or sometimes several stars, but NEVER mentions the writers, producers or directors involved - though he does make room to discuss the theme music, sometimes going so far as to mention what records the music was on and how well they sold. The history of the the characters in shows based on pre-existing concepts and properties - such as "The Lone Ranger" - is rarely touched on. He also goes on at length about the future careers of many of the stars - but devotes little space to discussion of the series' themes or plotlines. And he only occasionally bothers to let us know whether the particular show in question was in black and white or color. Indexes in the back list original airtimes (fine), Emmy and ratings winners (ok), and cast lists for the shows - which mostly duplicates material he has already given us in the body of the descriptions. There are a handful of very poorly reproduced photos, publicity shots mostly, which don't really add value to the package either. And finally, the author's curmudgeonly introduction which castigates current popular tastes and makes him come off as the kind of guy who's always yelling "you kids get off my lawn" - isn't doing any favors if he wants to help keep these old shows alive. Ironic, I suppose, that he spends a lot of time complaining about the computer and video generation - and that I'm ending this review by telling the reader that there's nothing in this book besides the author's ornery and fairly uninteresting opinions that can't be readily found on a variety of internet sites now, making this book - especially at the high price it usually goes for - pretty close to useless. There are a few other books on TV westerns; shop around; though I'm really just whetting my feet in this area, I'm fairly sure that I, and you, can do better than this book.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-12-17 00:00:00 Hector Canpos Some pretty glaring mistakes that could have easily been researched. It a light read altogether.