He Has Shot the President!: April 14, 1865: The Day John Wilkes Booth Killed President Lincoln

The fifth book in the Actual Times series is a sober account of the assassination of President Lincoln. Booth “believed that robbing the Union of the president’s leadership would cripple the North and save the South,” writes Brown; the assassination takes place early on, and the brunt of the book follows Booth’s attempted flight, Lincoln’s death, and the “relentless, sweeping investigation” to find Booth and his conspirators. Brown’s shadowy pencil-and-watercolor images mitigate some of the horror of events that included multiple shootings, stabbings, and the eventual hanging of four involved with the assassination plot. Even so, a sense of the nation’s loss reverberates through this harrowing recounting. Ages 6–9. (Apr.)