Get the behind-the-scenes scoop on President Lincoln’s most famous speech, still resonant 150 years later. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln gave one of the most important speeches in the history of the United States—the Gettysburg Address. It wasn’t even much a speech, really. Just a few remarks. Not meant to be remembered. Yet 150 years later, those few remarks have been remembered. How come? What was the true meaning behind them? Where did they come from? Why is it so important that we never forget what President Lincoln said on that cold November day? Originally published as A Three-Minute Speech, this concise, illustrated exploration of a momentous historical event is both fascinating and easy to read.
Author
Jennifer Armstrong learned to read and write in Switzerland, in a small school for English speaking children on the shores of Lake Zurich. The school library had no librarian and no catalog – just shelves of interesting books. She selected books on her own, read what she could, and made up the rest. It was perfect. As a result, she made her career choice – to become an author – in first grade. When she and her family returned to the U.S. she discovered that not all children wrote stories and read books, and that not all teachers thought reading real books was important. Nevertheless, she was undaunted. Within a year of leaving college she was a free-lance ghost writer for a popular juvenile book series, and before long published her first trade novel, Steal Away, which won her a Golden Kite Honor for fiction. More than fifty additional novels and picture books followed, and before long she also tried her hand at nonfiction, winning an Orbis Pictus Award and a Horn Book Honor for her first nonfiction book, Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World. In late 2003 she will travel to the South Pole with the National Science Foundation to do research for a book on ice.
