Caught! Nabbing History's Most Wanted by Georgia Bragg - ADVISABLE

Caught! Nabbing History’s Most Wanted by Georgia Bragg, illustrated by Kevin O’Malley, 216 pages.  NON-FICTION  Crown Books for Young Readers (Penguin), 2019. $19  

Content: Language: G; Mature Content: G; Violence: PG-13.  

BUYING ADVISORY: MS, HS – ADVISABLE  

AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE  

Fourteen different historical figures are compiled in this book because at some point in their illustrious career they were caught by the authorities.  Whether they were guilty or not depends on the person, but their exciting story and outcome are covered as separate chapters.  The following people are included: Joan of Arc, Sir Walter Raleigh, Carvaggio, Blackbeard, John Wilkes Booth, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Mata Hari, Typhoid Mary, Rasputin, Vincenzo Peruggia (he stole the Mono Lisa), Bernard Otto Kuehn (WWII spy) and Al Capone.  

I enjoyed reading the summaries of well-known criminals and at the end of every chapter there are interesting statistics that read like a Guiness World Record fact page.  I was shocked and wowed by a lot of the stories that I didn’t know.  The illustrations are cartoonish and add to the story, but sometimes the snarky tone of the narrator was off-putting.  The content does include a beheading, shooting, burned at the stake and killing horses. Mata Hari’s story has abuse and refers to her being molested and that biography felt more hostile than the others.   

Reviewer, C. Peterson