MY CHILDHOOD'S HOME

Author:
Richard Kigel

Richard Kigel has provided an irresistible and inspiring saga of Lincoln’s rise from obscurity to the threshold of greatness. In recalling this eternally enchanting and quintessentially American Story, the book reminds us of the enduring promise of opportunity in a democratic society—the ethic Lincoln lived, and for which he ultimately died. Young and adult readers alike, both students and teachers, will find much of value in MY CHILDHOOD’S HOME.

~ Harold Holzer, leading Lincoln scholar, former co-chair of the U.S. Lincoln Bicentennial Commission

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MY CHILDHOOD’S HOME: Growing Up With Young Abe Lincoln by Richard Kigel, published late last year, presents Lincoln’s boyhood and young adult life in the words of people who knew him. There are no historical theories here or philosophical speculations.

The story of Lincoln’s less-than-privileged boyhood in rural Kentucky and Indiana has been told, but Kigel felt the part about how the Great Emancipator acquired his literacy skills had not been fully explored.

But there’s more. Here we have a brawling Lincoln, a young army officer who went to the brig for firing a gun too close to camp, and a young man crushed by the death of his first love.

Kigel uses authenticated primary sources for the most part and that’s what makes this book trustworthy as well as fascinating.

One of his sources is Lincoln’s law partner, William Herndon. After Lincoln was assassinated, Herndon went back to where Lincoln grew up in Indiana and Kentucky and interviewed and/or solicited letters from people who knew him to produce a record “just as he lived, breathed, ate, and laughed in this world.”

~ Diane Petryk Bloom, Reviewer for CHILDREN'S BOOK EXAMINER,
April 11, 2009

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MY CHILDHOOD’S HOME: Growing Up with Young Lincoln grew, said Richard Kigel, out of his fascination with how the country’s 16th president acquired his literacy skills.

“It’s a very inspiring story,” he added during a phone interview, explaining that a full five chapters of the book center around the subject.

“History is not my field,” Kigel confessed. “I was looking for someone who rose from pure poverty, who taught himself to read and write. I did some research and realized that this was a story that hadn’t been told. One of the strengths of the book is that I don’t have a historian’s perspective. I have the perspective of a teacher and storyteller. So I put the data in narrative form. There’s no analysis, no theories.”

Kigel focused on using authenticated primary sources to write his book, which weaves extensive quotes from the documents together with a narrative composed by Kigel that ends when the future president is elected to the Illinois State Legislature at the age of 25.

The book will help meet the increased interest in the president that has so far marked the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth, an interest only enhanced by President Barack Obama’s fascination with his predecessor, who also came to the White House from the state of Illinois. It also fills a gap that other recent books do not. “About 70 or 80 books on Lincoln were published this year and not one of them focuses on Lincoln’s boyhood,” Kigel said. “That means my book has a very unique place on the Lincoln bookshelf.”

~ Helen Klein

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The 16th president of the United States, best remembered for his fight to end slavery and as the first president to be assassinated, was born to farmers and started his life with next to nothing. In his new book MY CHILDHOOD’S HOME: Growing Up With Young Abe Lincoln, Kigel traces the president's humble beginnings. "Just about every other book on Lincoln focuses on the Civil War, his law career, his presidency, his morality, his religion," said Kigel. "But I didn't think there was anything focusing on Lincoln growing up, especially how he acquired his literacy skills."

MY CHILDHOOD’S HOME is told through accounts of those who knew Lincoln. The book, Kigel said, comes from authentic sources and is meticulously sourced with pages of annotations.

“Authenticity was very important to me," Kigel explained. "I wanted people to know the actual words are what they said. This is the real story."

He added, "My vision of it was, if we're to invite people who knew Lincoln growing up -- cousins, friends, his stepmother -- into our living room and they talked about him and reminisced about him, this is what they would say."

~ Anndrea Boyarksy, STATEN ISLAND ADVANCE, May 17, 2009

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Continuing the greatest outpouring of Lincoln literature since the 1909 centennial, both popular and scholarly books continue to pour off the nation’s presses. MY CHILDHOOD’S HOME: Growing up with Young Abe Lincoln by Richard Kigel offers a veteran teacher’s view of the young Lincoln as the inspiring product of the American frontier who, as a young man, as William Herndon attested, was “just as he lived, breathed, ate and laughed in this world.”

~ The Lincoln Forum Bulletin (Issue 25, Spring 2009)

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I have read Richard Kigel’s book MY CHILDHOOD’S HOME and I congratulate the author on a job well done. The book covers a period in Abraham Lincoln’s life that has far less written on it than his adult years. I really like the way Kigel used the accounts of Lincoln’s contemporaries rather than the folklore and urban legends that other authors sprinkle in with their accounts of Lincoln’s younger days. It’s hard for me to think of another book which covers the same time period Kigel’s book covers. Additionally, Kigel has done an outstanding job of citing his sources, something even the great Carl Sandburg did not do to the extent Kigel did. This book is a welcome addition to the field of Lincoln studies and I would recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about Lincoln’s formative years.

~ Roger Norton, Abraham Lincoln Research Site

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Richard Kigel’s extraordinary book on young Abe Lincoln, MY CHILDHOOD’S HOME is a little like a literary time machine. Meticulously researched, told in the words of those who knew him, it takes you out of your easy chair and puts you in the middle of history. Filled with marvelous stories of Lincoln as a boy, it adds up to a portrait of the man. By the time I finished MY CHILDHOOD’S HOME, I didn’t feel like I read about Lincoln. I walked with Abe, talked to Abe, sat at his dinner table, and conversed with his friends.

~ LESLIE PETER WULFF, novelist and writer