John Paul George And Ben By Lane Smith

John Paul George And Ben By Lane Smith

It is a picture book that looks simple until you actually sit down to read it with a kid. Lane Smith is the same guy who did The Stinky Cheese Man and several other books that quietly trick you into thinking they are just goofy stories. This one is about four historical figures sitting around drinking beer and arguing. John Paul Jones, George Washington, Ben Franklin, and William "Scuffy" Taney. Yes, that is a real person on the founding father roster. Scuffy was a runaway enslaved person who served in the Revolutionary War. The book uses bright cartoonish illustrations, heavy ink lines, and characters that look like they wandered off another Smith book. Kids tend to love the humor immediately. Adults usually miss the actual point until someone points it out. The argument between Washington and the others is not really about politics. It is about how history gets told and who gets left out. Franklin keeps bringing up Scuffy while Washington pushes back. That tension is the whole book.

John Paul George And Ben By Lane Smith

If you are looking to get a copy, it is published by Balzer + Bray and usually retails between sixteen and twenty dollars depending on format. You can find new copies at most major bookstores or ordered through Amazon. Used copies show up regularly on AbeBooks and ThriftBooks for cheaper. If you are buying for a classroom, I would recommend the hardcover version because the paperback spine does not survive beyond the second read-through in most school libraries. The reading level sits around grades three through five, but it works better as a read-aloud for younger kids because the dialogue moves fast and some of the jokes fly over their heads. I read this to a group of second graders and three of them asked if Benjamin Franklin really carried a electric eel in his pocket. That is not in the book. He carried a kite key and a bunch of other nonsense. Still, I let them keep that theory. Here is the part most people skip. This book is not a history lesson. It is a book about how we remember people. Franklin is the one pushing the group to acknowledge Scuffy's contributions. Washington is embarrassed and defensive. That is the conflict. The resolution is basically Franklin saying you cannot leave people out of your story and expect it to make sense. The ending is ambiguous enough that some teachers try to wrap it up with a neat moral, but the book does not do that. It ends with the four of them still not quite agreeing.

I ran into a specific issue last year when a parent complained that the book was promoting an anti-American agenda because it questioned the Founding Fathers. I had to explain that the book is literally from 2011 and Lane Smith has been making this kind of point since the nineties. The parent walked away unhappy. The kid who sat next to me during the discussion asked if Scuffy got a beer. He did not. The book makes that clear. Scuffy is twelve and they are all drinking something else. That detail matters because it keeps the whole scene grounded instead of turning into pure parody. One thing beginners miss with this book is that the illustrations carry half the story. Smith puts visual gags in the background that reference other historical events and other books he has done. If you only read the text, you are getting maybe sixty percent of the material. I have seen teachers assign this book and then only do a text-based discussion, which defeats the purpose. You need to look at the panels. The marginalia, the background characters, the little details in the beer mugs and the documents on the table. That is where the actual jokes live. The biggest limitation of this book is that it requires some prior knowledge to land properly. A kid who has never heard of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitutional Convention is going to find the arguments confusing. The humor is layered. The political references assume you know who these people are roughly. I would not recommend this as a first introduction to American history. It works best after kids already have a basic timeline in their heads and can recognize when the book is playing with those assumptions.

There is no companion workbook or official reading guide from the publisher. The School Library Journal has a short review that covers the main themes but nothing structured for lesson plans. You can find discussion questions scattered across teacher blogs and Goodreads threads, but nothing authoritative. I wrote my own set of prompts based on what actually came up when I discussed it with students, and those tended to work better than anything I found online because they were tied to moments that actually confused or interested the kids in the room. The book is approximately one hundred and forty-four pages in hardcover with full-color illustrations on nearly every spread. The pacing is deliberate. Smith does not rush through the argument. Each section gets time to breathe, which means the book feels longer than it is. Some kids lose focus around the middle section where Franklin starts quoting his own writings. That is normal. I have learned to pause and ask what Franklin is actually saying before moving forward. Availability varies by region. In some school districts this book has faced challenges due to its portrayal of historical figures and the casual drinking imagery, though the drinking is clearly non-alcoholic for the kids in the story. It has not been banned at any scale I am aware of, but librarians should know that it occasionally comes up in materials review conversations. If you are stocking a library, keeping it in the picture book section rather than the history section is the right call. It belongs with other Smith titles and similar humorous historical picture books.

There are no direct sequels or follow-ups in the same series. This stands alone. Smith has done other historical picture books and other books featuring anachronistic historical figures, but this is its own thing. If kids enjoy this one, the next step is usually The Three Pigs or The Rooster and the Fox, neither of which are historically themed but both of which share the same tonal approach to subverting expectations.