Chil­dren’s

Steven Spiel­berg

Tom Pow­ers
  • Review
By – December 16, 2011
A sim­ply writ­ten but com­pre­hen­sive biog­ra­phy of Steven Spiel­berg and the film indus­try with col­or­ful graph­ics and a pop look. Begin­ning with Spielberg’s child­hood and his nerdy” ado­les­cence, it pro­gress­es through his film career. Young Spiel­berg was always inter­est­ed and tal­ent­ed in shoot­ing film, first with a sim­ple 8 mm cam­era and lat­er with more advanced equip­ment. The respect his movie projects gar­nered him — even from a bul­ly who was mak­ing his life mis­er­able until he gave him the star­ring role in his first teenage epic, con­vinced Spiel­berg where his future lay. As his grades weren’t good enough to gain him entrance to a fine film col­lege, he sim­ply crashed Hol­ly­wood stu­dios, learn­ing tech­niques and quit­ting col­lege before grad­u­a­tion once one of his brief films impressed an impre­sario who became his men­tor. Appear­ing to belong to read­ers from ages 8 – 12, some of the book’s con­tents sim­ply weren’t appro­pri­ate for chil­dren under 12. A call to the pub­li­cist con­firmed that although it is at a fourth grade read­ing lev­el, with brief sen­tences and most­ly sim­ple words, its inter­est lev­el was from 10 – 18 years old (fourth to twelfth grades); how­ev­er it is doubt­ful that a youth of 16 – 18 would pick up this child­like appear­ing book. An attrac­tive book with much infor­ma­tion, best for grades 6 – 9.
Mar­cia W. Pos­ner, Ph.D., of the Holo­caust Memo­r­i­al and Tol­er­ance Cen­ter of Nas­sau Coun­ty, is the library and pro­gram direc­tor. An author and play­wright her­self, she loves review­ing for JBW and read­ing all the oth­er reviews and arti­cles in this mar­velous periodical.

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