Kids are Americans Too

I'm not what they would call a political zealot. I tend to lean a little more to the conservative side on economic issues, and more on the liberal side on social issues. I don't watch any of the political talk shows unless they just happen to be on when I'm channel surfing, and even then it's a very quick five-minute process.

I'm not a Bill O'Reilly fan, nor do I think he's the Devil incarnate either. I've watched him a few times, was mildly entertained, and moved on. So when Parent Bloggers Network asked me if I'd be interested in reviewing O'Reilly's latest book "Kids are Americans Too", I really wasn't sure what to expect.


I liked the general premise of the book, which is to teach kids about their rights. As O'Reilly puts it, if you look at modern-day society it's hard to believe how much things have changed since the Founding Fathers came up with the Declaration of Independence. As much as things have changed, though, our fundamental rights are still the same as they were over 200 years ago. And once you think about that, it's pretty cool. O'Reilly also discusses how sometimes an individual has to think about the "common good" versus what the individual's own interests are, and sometimes the common good has to outweigh that. He also discusses some court cases regarding kids' rights with varying degrees of success.


O'Reilly doesn't go into any serious depth about the Constitution, the government, or the Supreme Court with his aim to give kids a very broad overview of how our rights work without going into minute detail. I think that in his attempt to give an overview, however, he almost gives too little information.


But maybe that isn't such a bad thing in this case. Although O'Reilly comes out of the gate very strongly in the first few chapters and had me completely hooked into the premise of the book, by mid-way in the book I was pretty turned off. I really wanted to believe that O'Reilly would give fair and balanced coverage to the topics, however I was really disappointed when slowly but surely he started sneaking his own viewpoints into the book. By the end, I really got the impression that O'Reilly would be almost giddy if every kid that reads this book subscribed to his beliefs. Not to mention that he slipped in references to his talk show and other books that he has written, which I think really isn't appropriate to do in this type of book. Save the sales pitch for another audience, please.


My biggest beef with the book, however, was that I think it was dumbed down a lot. The writing style is very disjointed - now, I have never read any of O'Reilly's other works so I'm not sure if this was written to appeal to teens with "MTV brain" as I call it, or if this is his normal style. I think kids today are way smarter than he gives them credit for in the book and the style of writing. In addition, there were multiple parts in the book where I felt like O'Reilly was very patronizing toward the reader as if they weren't quite cool enough or smart enough to play in his sandbox. It's one thing to play Devil's Advocate in order to arouse interest in a topic that you're passionate about, but it's another thing to make the reader feel like a moron if they don't align with your viewpoints.


Overall, I think the idea of the book was great - I mean hey, don't we all want to know more about our rights and want our kids to know more too? However, I think O'Reilly's personal beliefs bleed into the book too much for it to be an impartial report on this topic. I'd really like to see this subject tackled for teens by someone who is a little more politically neutral rather than someone trying to covertly push their own personal agenda.