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4.02 AVERAGE
4.02 AVERAGE
I don't think it's really possible to spoil The Good Neighbor, but warnings anyway.
I'm certainly a fan of non-fiction, but it was difficult to be a fan of this book. We find out towards the end that the author, Maxwell King, was brought onboard the organization Fred Rogers was planning to devote the rest of his life to at the time of his unexpected passing, and understood the real need for a biography to help advance Rogers' ideals after his death. He was encouraged to write the biography himself, and was nervous as he'd never done a book before.
The Good Neighbor is packed with information. You will know everything there is to know about Fred Rogers. The truth. The apocryphal. The origins of the man, his iconic television series, his thoughts on cognitive education of children versus emotional maturation. The problem is we get it in a bland, repetitive and haphazard way.
One of the strengths of biographies is in storytelling. Dr. Margaret McFarland, a mentor of Fred Rogers who assisted him in creating the Mr. Rogers Neighborhood was instrumental in reinforcing his ministerial training in using parables and storytelling to convey information to children. I feel like that would have really helped in this book! We get a download of data that's repeated over and over to the reader. We learn endlessly about his parents and their generous nature in supporting their small town with their vast wealth. The wealth originated from his mother's side, whereas his maternal great-grandmother left her husband for her wealthy employer. When we move onto college, we are introduced to his future wife, and learn about her father, a former teacher who became a postal employee. His career was particularly notable, in that he rode the postal trains and was responsible for lifting and throwing massively heavy mailbags off of the trains into nets while the train chugged along at full speed through small towns.
The problem is, and I'm sure he was a very nice man, but why do I need to know what Fred Rogers father-in-law did for a living? He's not included again, and if feels like information that was derived from a source and not cut for relevance. There's a haphazard nature to the release of information. We're told at length of historical details about characters in Fred Rogers life, not in the form of helpful parables but like we're cramming for an exam, repeating facts over and over so we can remember them for a test and then forget them moments later.
That may not be fair. We do get some parables, surely. There's a great one about Fred Rogers going to an executive's home for dinner, befriending his driver, bringing the driver into the executive's home to dine with them, returning to the driver's home to meet his family, and remaining in touch for the rest of the man's life. We probably got a great number of these examples of the man throughout the book, but there's so much data-based repetition that they feel too bogged down.
Here's one example that really jumped out at me.
"Dr. Spock, like Rogers later, encouraged young parents to realize that they themselves had all the tools to help their children, and that engaging with children deeply was more important than incessantly correcting them. A champion rower (he won an Olympic gold medal with the Yale crew in 1924), Spock also became controversial for his opposition to the Vietnam War in the 1960s."
The concept about engaging with children comes up time and time again, but in the last sentence the author wants to reinforce that Dr. Spock was also a champion rower who was opposed to the Vietnam War? Why on earth do I need to know that?
Let me compare this book to Michelle Obama's recent autobiography. In that book, we travel from her early life through to her schooling, legal career, meeting her future husband, second career, and the road that leads them to the White House. There's not a lot of jumping around and very little jumping ahead. Good biographies are chronological. They take us on a journey. This book doesn't follow that rule. We're relatively fine through his college years, albeit with more repetition than I'd like, switch gears to his career and theories on childhood development, and then effectively drop his family. His parents are rarely mentioned again. His sister is quoted frequently, always reminding us who she is. There was actually a paragraph where she is twice described as "Fred's sister Laney." Once his second run at Mr. Rogers begins, all chronology is lost through his retirement. We go from something that happened in 1975 to a story about 1997 and back again.
I wish we had more structure, and it may not be possible. Fred Rogers story wasn't one that lends itself to a journey after a particular point, because for the last 20 years of his life he created a show that was intentionally repetitive. In spite of the wonderful information we received, the manner in which it was packaged absolutely cried out for a better editor.
In conclusion, I learned so much about Fred Rogers I didn't know. He was a remarkable man and in the Trump era, we desperately need him. As an author, Maxwell King did his best doing something he'd never done before, and from the tonnage of interviews and research he did, worked enormously hard. His 350 page book needed to have been about 125 pages lighter. The kitchen sink wasn't necessary.
I'm certainly a fan of non-fiction, but it was difficult to be a fan of this book. We find out towards the end that the author, Maxwell King, was brought onboard the organization Fred Rogers was planning to devote the rest of his life to at the time of his unexpected passing, and understood the real need for a biography to help advance Rogers' ideals after his death. He was encouraged to write the biography himself, and was nervous as he'd never done a book before.
The Good Neighbor is packed with information. You will know everything there is to know about Fred Rogers. The truth. The apocryphal. The origins of the man, his iconic television series, his thoughts on cognitive education of children versus emotional maturation. The problem is we get it in a bland, repetitive and haphazard way.
One of the strengths of biographies is in storytelling. Dr. Margaret McFarland, a mentor of Fred Rogers who assisted him in creating the Mr. Rogers Neighborhood was instrumental in reinforcing his ministerial training in using parables and storytelling to convey information to children. I feel like that would have really helped in this book! We get a download of data that's repeated over and over to the reader. We learn endlessly about his parents and their generous nature in supporting their small town with their vast wealth. The wealth originated from his mother's side, whereas his maternal great-grandmother left her husband for her wealthy employer. When we move onto college, we are introduced to his future wife, and learn about her father, a former teacher who became a postal employee. His career was particularly notable, in that he rode the postal trains and was responsible for lifting and throwing massively heavy mailbags off of the trains into nets while the train chugged along at full speed through small towns.
The problem is, and I'm sure he was a very nice man, but why do I need to know what Fred Rogers father-in-law did for a living? He's not included again, and if feels like information that was derived from a source and not cut for relevance. There's a haphazard nature to the release of information. We're told at length of historical details about characters in Fred Rogers life, not in the form of helpful parables but like we're cramming for an exam, repeating facts over and over so we can remember them for a test and then forget them moments later.
That may not be fair. We do get some parables, surely. There's a great one about Fred Rogers going to an executive's home for dinner, befriending his driver, bringing the driver into the executive's home to dine with them, returning to the driver's home to meet his family, and remaining in touch for the rest of the man's life. We probably got a great number of these examples of the man throughout the book, but there's so much data-based repetition that they feel too bogged down.
Here's one example that really jumped out at me.
"Dr. Spock, like Rogers later, encouraged young parents to realize that they themselves had all the tools to help their children, and that engaging with children deeply was more important than incessantly correcting them. A champion rower (he won an Olympic gold medal with the Yale crew in 1924), Spock also became controversial for his opposition to the Vietnam War in the 1960s."
The concept about engaging with children comes up time and time again, but in the last sentence the author wants to reinforce that Dr. Spock was also a champion rower who was opposed to the Vietnam War? Why on earth do I need to know that?
Let me compare this book to Michelle Obama's recent autobiography. In that book, we travel from her early life through to her schooling, legal career, meeting her future husband, second career, and the road that leads them to the White House. There's not a lot of jumping around and very little jumping ahead. Good biographies are chronological. They take us on a journey. This book doesn't follow that rule. We're relatively fine through his college years, albeit with more repetition than I'd like, switch gears to his career and theories on childhood development, and then effectively drop his family. His parents are rarely mentioned again. His sister is quoted frequently, always reminding us who she is. There was actually a paragraph where she is twice described as "Fred's sister Laney." Once his second run at Mr. Rogers begins, all chronology is lost through his retirement. We go from something that happened in 1975 to a story about 1997 and back again.
I wish we had more structure, and it may not be possible. Fred Rogers story wasn't one that lends itself to a journey after a particular point, because for the last 20 years of his life he created a show that was intentionally repetitive. In spite of the wonderful information we received, the manner in which it was packaged absolutely cried out for a better editor.
In conclusion, I learned so much about Fred Rogers I didn't know. He was a remarkable man and in the Trump era, we desperately need him. As an author, Maxwell King did his best doing something he'd never done before, and from the tonnage of interviews and research he did, worked enormously hard. His 350 page book needed to have been about 125 pages lighter. The kitchen sink wasn't necessary.
This was very interesting. I knew so little about Mr. Rogers. The audiobook read by Levar Burton is very well done. I really enjoyed the connection of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood meets the host of Reading Rainbow.
emotional
informative
slow-paced
Short Review: I am a fan of Mister Rogers. I have read two previous semi-biographical books on Mister Rogers as well as a couple of books by Fred Rogers and watched the Won't You Be My Neighbor documentary (3 times so far), but The Good Neighbor is the first full biography.
The Good Neighbor is Max King's first book. He is a decent writer, having been a journalist or newspaper editor for 30 years. But there were places where I think some more editing would have helped (particularly the repetition of some stories which made me wonder if those repeated stories were repeated because they were so characteristic or because the author didn't have more examples to cite.)
I appreciate that The Good Neighbor isn't hagiography, especially since Fred Rogers is often seen as a modern saint. Mister Rogers is presented as a whole, but not perfect person, although the thread of Fred Rogers being the same person at home as he was on the screen runs throughout the book.
As a Christian, I appreciated that his Christian faith was well presented and throughout the book (not isolated to a small section), but this is not a 'Christian biography'. As the book Peaceful Neighbor makes clear, Fred Rogers was a serious Christian, but of the mainline somewhat liberal stream of Christianity.
My longer review, about 1000 words, is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/the-good-neighbor/
The Good Neighbor is Max King's first book. He is a decent writer, having been a journalist or newspaper editor for 30 years. But there were places where I think some more editing would have helped (particularly the repetition of some stories which made me wonder if those repeated stories were repeated because they were so characteristic or because the author didn't have more examples to cite.)
I appreciate that The Good Neighbor isn't hagiography, especially since Fred Rogers is often seen as a modern saint. Mister Rogers is presented as a whole, but not perfect person, although the thread of Fred Rogers being the same person at home as he was on the screen runs throughout the book.
As a Christian, I appreciated that his Christian faith was well presented and throughout the book (not isolated to a small section), but this is not a 'Christian biography'. As the book Peaceful Neighbor makes clear, Fred Rogers was a serious Christian, but of the mainline somewhat liberal stream of Christianity.
My longer review, about 1000 words, is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/the-good-neighbor/
The subject matter is Fred Rogers and warrants 5 stars. The actual writing is 2 stars. So I compromised with a 3 star rating.
I thought it was fascinating to read about Mr. Fred Rogers who was a true champion of children and advocate for educational television. It is such an amazing gift to discover that your childhood hero was actually even better up close- what a rare thing that is.
As I was reading this biography I couldn't stop myself from sharing tidbit after tidbit with my husband. At first I felt bad because I knew if I kept telling him all these fascinating stories about Mr. Rogers my husband wouldn't want to read the book for himself. After the halfway mark I stopped caring and shared wholeheartedly because I actually didn't want him to read this book.
The nicest thing I can say about the author is that he has a clear love and appreciation for his subject (which is not difficult because it is Fred freaking Rogers. Everyone loves him, including sign language using gorillas. For Pete's sake, thieves returned his stolen car once they learned it was his with a note expressing their sorrow. The man is, quite possibly, the most universally beloved individual on the planet.) The author's writing, however, is repetitive and excessive. This book would have benefitted wonderfully with some merciless editing and pruning- more stories and information, less gushing and repetition.
Let me share my favorite story I learned from this book about Mr. Rogers; it was the inside joke he shared with his wife Joanne. They once overheard a woman praising the man who reupholstered her car seats saying, "..this makes my sweet ass smile." For the rest of their lives, Mr. and Mrs. Rogers would quote this whenever they were exhausted and finally able to sit down. Imagining this fills me with a giddy joy.
Oh Mr. Rogers, the neighborhood is not the same without you.
I thought it was fascinating to read about Mr. Fred Rogers who was a true champion of children and advocate for educational television. It is such an amazing gift to discover that your childhood hero was actually even better up close- what a rare thing that is.
As I was reading this biography I couldn't stop myself from sharing tidbit after tidbit with my husband. At first I felt bad because I knew if I kept telling him all these fascinating stories about Mr. Rogers my husband wouldn't want to read the book for himself. After the halfway mark I stopped caring and shared wholeheartedly because I actually didn't want him to read this book.
The nicest thing I can say about the author is that he has a clear love and appreciation for his subject (which is not difficult because it is Fred freaking Rogers. Everyone loves him, including sign language using gorillas. For Pete's sake, thieves returned his stolen car once they learned it was his with a note expressing their sorrow. The man is, quite possibly, the most universally beloved individual on the planet.) The author's writing, however, is repetitive and excessive. This book would have benefitted wonderfully with some merciless editing and pruning- more stories and information, less gushing and repetition.
Let me share my favorite story I learned from this book about Mr. Rogers; it was the inside joke he shared with his wife Joanne. They once overheard a woman praising the man who reupholstered her car seats saying, "..this makes my sweet ass smile." For the rest of their lives, Mr. and Mrs. Rogers would quote this whenever they were exhausted and finally able to sit down. Imagining this fills me with a giddy joy.
Oh Mr. Rogers, the neighborhood is not the same without you.
This was a fun read. I grew up watching Mr. Rogers and it was enjoyable reading about his life and how much he did for educational television. Especially how much was involved in helping children.
informative
inspiring
This book was an incredible look into the icon Fred Rogers. If only everyone was like Fred the world would be a better place. This book was really special
Good, compelling, etc. The author mentions at the very end how he had to persuade the various folks involved with Fred Rogers's estate that a biography was worthwhile, and the author was correct.
The book lightly addresses the ways in which Mister Rogers was *not* a paragon of tolerance and understanding, specifically to do with early parochial instincts regarding divorce, homosexuality, etc. I suspect a more thorough accounting of his inadequacies is possible. I don't wish for this to diminish him. I just don't think we should cut good people any slack for when they're wrong.
Anyway... what a guy.
The book lightly addresses the ways in which Mister Rogers was *not* a paragon of tolerance and understanding, specifically to do with early parochial instincts regarding divorce, homosexuality, etc. I suspect a more thorough accounting of his inadequacies is possible. I don't wish for this to diminish him. I just don't think we should cut good people any slack for when they're wrong.
Anyway... what a guy.
This rating is not a review of Fred Rogers, but the book, which when the music played to indicate the audiobook was over, I sighed with relief and thought “Thank God.” Fred Rogers the person gets five stars. The Good Neighbor the book gets one star. I compromised with two. If you like Fred Rogers, please watch the movie with Tom Hanks, or read one of the short books Fred Rogers wrote, or re-watch his show for nostalgia. Please don’t read this. To reiterate what a lot of the negative reviews have said, it is extremely boring, long, and repetitive. I swear whole paragraphs were copied and pasted throughout the book randomly. We got to hear the same song lyrics transcripted again and again. We were given lengthy quotes by numerous people saying the exact same thing in the exact same way. Every person Fred interacted with at some point in his life, we got the pleasure of knowing where that person grew up and the occupations of their parents and everything they ever said that was mildly related to Fred Rogers. Not much will bore me on my commute, but I would have rather sat in silence.