Review Detail

This is a big wowza of a book about a true-life wowza of a celebrity, P.T. Barnum, who founded the great Barnum & Bailey Circus. Barnum was a larger than life entertainer whose main goal in life was to amuse people. This book, crammed full of pictures, cartoons, posters, and fascinating sidebars, traces Phineas Taylor Barnum's life from his boyhood in Bethel, Connecticut, where he was born into a farm family that loved jokes and pranks.

"Tale," as his family called Barnum, also loved money. At eight years old, he began making candy to sell to soldiers who trained in Bethel. After his father died, when Tale was fifteen, he dreamed up a bigger scheme to make money--a "magnificent lottery!" Little did the eager buyers of lottery tickets know that the winners would take home a less-than-magnificent glass bottle. But--they were happy! As Barnum learned, people just love to win something, anything.
The stage was set for a life striving to make customers happy and entertained . . .and readers of this utterly fascinating and gripping tale are likely to find that they, too, are happy and entertained.