Linda Barrett Osborne
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Linda Barrett Osborne

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Guardians of Liberty: Freedom of the Press and the Nature of News is Linda Barrett Osborne’s sixth nonfiction book for middle school children and young adults. They include Traveling the Freedom Road: From Slavery & the Civil War Through Reconstruction; Miles to Go for Freedom: Segregation and Civil Rights in the Jim Crow Years; and Come On In, America: the United States in World War I. This Land Is Our Land: A History of American Immigration was a finalist for the American Library Association Yalsa Award in 2017 and was named a Carter G. Woodson Secondary Honor Book by the National Council for the Social Studies. Osborne co-authored Oh, Freedom!: Kids Talk About the Civil Rights Movement with the People Who Made it Happen, winner of the Flora Stieglitz Straus Award for nonfiction sponsored by Bank Street College. Oh, Freedom! was published in 1997 (and is still in print; it has sold more than 50,000 copies). This was the beginning of her interest in writing about American history for young people that deals honestly with complex and problematic issues, but also offers hope by recounting the experiences of people who have successfully overcome discrimination, prejudice, and hate. Osborne was a senior writer-editor in the Publishing Office of the Library of Congress for nearly 15 years, where she authored Women of the Civil Rights Movement and co-authored Explorers Emigrants Citizens: A Visual History of the Italian American Experience from the Collections of the Library of Congress and desk reference books on the Civil War and World War II. She was a long time book reviewer for the Washington Post and the New York Times and an award-winning short story writer. She lives in Washington, DC, which she looks forward to seeing become a state in her lifetime. Reviews for Guardians of Liberty STARRED KIRKUS REVIEW: “Knowing the story of why freedom of the press was important to the founding fathers…and how it has stayed a strong principle in American law and culture can help us understand its value today.” This efficient text (an introduction and nine short chapters, buttressed by a timeline) offers an excellent foray into the hows and whys of U.S. press freedom, beginning just prior to nationhood. The accessible, mostly chronological text is full of short quotations from both primary and secondary sources. It includes excellent definitions, informative sidebars, and archival photographs. The ebb and flow of press freedoms over the course of the country’s history are combined with succinct history of the means of communication, from printing on paper all the way through to today’s social media. Careful scholarship links big questions about balancing transparency and national security to wartime reporting, the Pentagon Papers, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and more. The text warns about today’s citizens’ reading and listening only to outlets that support their own views and how that endangers democracy. President Donald Trump’s media provocations are discussed along with the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and the work of Reporters Without Borders. Two cases involving high schoolers’ freedoms are explored. A particularly noteworthy sidebar offers guidance on how readers can determine the accuracy of their news. For optimal use, readers should first have a rudimentary understanding of U.S. civics, which perhaps makes it better suited to middle and high school than elementary readers. Timely, essential reading. (index, select bibliography) (Nonfiction. 12-16) BOOKLIST REVIEW: Guardians of Liberty: Freedom of the Press and the Nature of News. By Linda Barrett Osborne Aug. 2020. 208p. illus. Abrams, $18.99 (9781419736896). Gr. 7–10. 323.44 This well-written book explains how the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights protects the freedom of the press by permitting the expression of different views, whether those viewpoints are widely agreed upon or not. After defining what the news is, the book provides an overview of press history from colonial times to the present. It describes the evolution of news dissemination, beginning with print and moving to radio, television, internet, and social media, and highlights court cases involving press freedoms. Readers may be surprised to learn that fake news originated in the 1800s. Included in the well-sourced back matter are critical-thinking questions that will spur debate and tips to help readers determine the accuracy of information. The author emphasizes the importance of a free press, but warns it can only continue if “we believe in the principle, practice it, and value it.” Readers will find numerous examples that support this statement in this informative, timely resource.
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