Assigned reading for MLIS 7421: Multicultural Youth Literature.

I don't know if the problem is me, this book, or just my expectations. I went into it expecting a standard nonfiction book, but what I received was a textbook on the history of North America, slightly watered down to be child-appropriate. It's factual, it's informative, it's not poorly written, it's just dreadfully boring. I found myself trudging through no more than a chapter at a time because it literally read like a school textbook, and if I wasn't assigned to read this for a class, I would have DNFed it within the first 100 pages.

Not only is it boring, it had so much of what seemed like filler material to me; there was a fair amount of repetition, and the author constantly quoted people, though rather than quoting them in a citation-friendly manner, it was usually worded like, "As an Irish peasant woman once said..." or "As a Native American chief once wrote..." Maybe it's a weird pet peeve of mine, but it kept reminding me of when you're a student writing an essay and trying to meet your word minimum, so you throw in arbitrary quotes that offer no value to the work and simply repeat what you've already paraphrased.

Mad respect for the author and his successes in life, and I definitely appreciate the fact that this exists, but I never want to read it ever again.