Unfortunately, I was unable to get into this title nor do I think it will work for my library. However, I know that it will appeal to other readers. I will not be adding my review to Goodreads so as not to skew the rating. Best of luck!

I read this book as consideration for our Mock Printz discussion at the library. It's a great account of Florence Nightingale's life. I have a hard time getting into biographies in general, but Reef made Nightingale so accessible and interesting! I know so much more about her now than I learned about her as a child in school. This is a great biography to recommend to teens who want to learn about a trailblazing woman, developments in modern medicine, or just an interesting historical figure.

Florence Nightingale: The Courageous Life of the Legendary Nurse is a fascinating look at the life of pioneering nurse Florence Nightingale. I was familiar with Nightingale, but I was surprised at what I didn’t know about this Victorian lady. The biography begins at the start of Nightingale’s life and follows the ups and downs of her journey to becoming one of the most celebrated nurses of all time.
I liked the attention that is given to Nightingale’s early life. So many biographies skim this period of a person’s life, and I think that younger audiences are especially interested in the childhoods of those they are reading about. There are a lot of stories about Nightingale and Reef does an excellent job sorting fact from fiction throughout the book. Florence had a long life and accomplished quite a bit over the course of it. Florence Nightingale: The Courageous Life of the Legendary Nurse translates this life into an accessible biography for young readers. It’s structure is perfect for school biography reports and it’s content makes it an engaging and interesting read.

This is a wonderful introductory biography to Florence Nightingale for children. Rather than a dry recitation of facts, this biography helps bring Florence to life in a way that makes her very accessible to younger readers, and paints a wonderful picture of all she had to overcome to make the contributions to our history that she did. This will definitely be a book that I widely recommend.