Abraham Lincoln Comes Home

Abraham Lincoln Comes Home by Robert Burleigh, paintings by Wendell Minor, Henry Holt and Co., 2008, ISBN 978-0-8050-7529-8
How does Robert Burleigh do it? How does he put so much history into a single picture book, and make it interesting as well? He is a master at choosing his words and creating characters that bring the whole story alive. In this book, a young boy and his father are traveling to a spot where they can view the train carrying the assassinated president "home" to Springfield, Illinois. The young boy knows that, "if he could have talked to Abe Lincoln, her would have liked him." The boy sees the train carrying the President, and is moved and saddened. The entire book is reverent in tone. The journey Lincoln's train took took 13 days in going from Washington DC to New York City, across the state of New York, through Ohio and Indiana to Chicago and finally Springfield. Millions of people came to the railroad tracks to pay their last respects. In the afterword, Burleigh quotes one historian who said "it was the mightiest outpouring of national grief the world had yet seen."
But Burleigh doesn't stop at a good story. He includes more information in the afterword, in the "Interesting Facts" section, on the verso page (bibliography) and even the endpapers of the book, which bear a flag similar to the small paper flags that served as popular symbols of mourning during the funeral observances.