Review: Faces From the Past: Forgotten People of North America by James M. Deem

Faces From the Past: Forgotten People of North America by James M. Deem.

Houghton Mifflin Books for Children
Publication Date: November 2012
List Price: $18.99
ISBN-13: 9780547370248

Review: Imagine this: you're exploring a cave or some sort of shrine. Then you find a body! If you like to read something like this, then Faces from the Past by James M. Deem is for you. It has many different characters and stories, a different character in each story.

Faces from the Past is about people who find a mysterious or famous body, dig it up, investigate it and find out about it. Then they have an artist come in and try to see what that person looked like from what they know, and create their ÒfaceÓ. In one story, a couple was exploring caves before bat-guano miners and pot hunters got to them. They found a cave, called Spirit Cave, and inspected it. They dug a bit and found two inner mats. One small mat covered half of the body. The other larger mat covered the rest of the body. I won't reveal what he looked like or his history, but it was interesting. There are more stories such as a stranded sailor from France, a Mexican soldier from San Jacinto, six Chinese miners from Wyoming, Tomas Smith, a Buffalo Soldier, and more.

In my opinion, Faces from Past was satisfactory. It was slow in some parts, but some were really fascinating. The author blended the uninteresting details nicely with the attention-grabbing stories of the people who were found. If I were rating this book, I would give it a seven out of ten. The parts I really liked were the stories about the history of the people who were found. I also liked how sometimes they just found the body accidentally, and what amazes me is that when this occurred, they didn't panic. The parts that I didn't like were some of the stories of how they explored to find the bodies. Their emotions when they found the body are the only good parts in those areas. I would read Faces of the Past again, definitely check it out of the library if I saw it, and recommend it in a heartbeat to readers who like to read books on the history of people.

Review written by Kyle (6th grade student).

We would like to thank Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for providing a copy of Faces From the Past: Forgotten People of North America for this review.

Have you read Faces From the Past: Forgotten People of North America? How would you rate it?