Some (semi) encouraging news

[Sally]

I was in the public library in Batavia, Illinois recently. As many of you know, Batavia was the site of Bellevue Place, the sanitarium where Mary Lincoln was committed briefly in 1875.

There were numerous stacks of books piled on large tables in the middle of the library with signs that read “Batavia High School Required Summer Reading”. I was delighted to see that among the required books was “Chasing Lincoln’s Killer”, along with one called “Mr. Lincoln’s High Tech War.”

HOORAY! It seems some schools are encouraging the creation of a new generation of Lincoln scholars and aficionados.

But then I looked on Batavia high school’s website and found that another required reading choice is O’Reilly’s dreck, “Killing Lincoln”.

Oh, well. Fingers crossed the kids choose Swanson’s book over the other one!