The Good Neighbor

It is refreshing to find that Mr. Rogers was just as admirable and kind and committed to children as he appeared to be. But a life without strife and controversy doesn't make for riveting reading, and the book had a lot of filler. So, 5+ stars for Mr. Rogers himself, 3 for the writing.

I didn't watch Mr. Rogers Neighborhood when I was a kid. I have no idea why – it seems like an amazing show. I've watched a few episodes since as an adult and have been amazed. Reading this had me tearing up in places at the empathy displayed by Fred Rogers throughout his life. There's something to just listening to people and telling them they're important just the way they are.

I didn't watch Mr. Rogers Neighborhood when I was a kid. I have no idea why – it seems like an amazing show. I've watched a few episodes since as an adult and have been amazed. Reading this had me tearing up in places at the empathy displayed by Fred Rogers throughout his life. There's something to just listening to people and telling them they're important just the way they are.

Fred Rogers is my hero. He's kind and gentle and clever and, best of all, he listens.

I read this book with trepidation. Would my hero be dethroned? Would this be the story of a person wildly different from the Mister Rogers I adore?

I can tell you, happily, that it is not. Every person, without exception, who met Rogers found him to be exactly as he presented himself on television. He wasn't a saint—-sometimes he lost his temper and he had troubles with his sons when they were teens—-but he was a very good human being. This is his story.

Short Review: I am a fan of Mister Rogers. I have read two previous semi-biographical books on Mister Rogers as well as a couple of books by Fred Rogers and watched the Won't You Be My Neighbor documentary (3 times so far), but The Good Neighbor is the first full biography.

The Good Neighbor is Max King's first book. He is a decent writer, having been a journalist or newspaper editor for 30 years. But there were places where I think some more editing would have helped (particularly the repetition of some stories which made me wonder if those repeated stories were repeated because they were so characteristic or because the author didn't have more examples to cite.)

I appreciate that The Good Neighbor isn't hagiography, especially since Fred Rogers is often seen as a modern saint. Mister Rogers is presented as a whole, but not perfect person, although the thread of Fred Rogers being the same person at home as he was on the screen runs throughout the book.

As a Christian, I appreciated that his Christian faith was well presented and throughout the book (not isolated to a small section), but this is not a ‘Christian biography'. As the book Peaceful Neighbor makes clear, Fred Rogers was a serious Christian, but of the mainline somewhat liberal stream of Christianity.

My longer review, about 1000 words, is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/the-good-neighbor/

This book is one that I began reading because I was looking forward to the new film (yet to be release to theaters as of this review) starring Tom Hanks. As far as his show is concerned, I have not really gotten into Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. I was a little to old to really get into it. I was always an Arthur or Between the Lions kind of kid. Still, I can appreciate what Mr. Roger's Neighborhood gave us. It brought respect and education to children's programming at a time when it was just seen as, well, kid's stuff.

This is one of the first times I am going to break my usual format and give the rating at the beginning of my review (not counting the star rating above me). I would give this book five stars for the subject, and two stars for the quality of the biography itself. It is fascinating to see how a child from such well-to-do parents managed to help so many people through the magic of television. Seeing Rogers grow from an insecure boy who loved puppets into a man who helped other children deal with their feelings is amazing. It was also fun find out all of the little tidbits about him that I would not have understood otherwise. One good lesson I found was that you can take a joy you had as a kid, in this case Mr. Rogers loving puppets, and turn them into a career. On a side note, the audiobook is read by LaVar Burton, who played Jordi LaForge on Star Trek, so it was well done, as always.

Yet, I cannot get over the fact that this book contains some of the most sophomoric writing I have seen in a long time. King suffers from, most likely, inexperience, seeing as this author has written nothing else as of this review. On a writing level, he tends to do two things poorly: 1. Have properly organized topics, 2. Introduce quoted people appropriately.

One of the major problems that King has is organizing the chapters in such a way that they do not repeat themselves. There are many times where the author feels like they are writing a chapter large version of a basic five paragraph essay, where they have an introduction, the body paragraphs, and then the conclusion. They also tend to take the exact same words they use in the introduction and repeat them in these ‘body paragraphs' like a sophomore trying to get to a specific page length. This can cause the reader to feel like they have read the same thing before half a dozen times, which in many cases, they have, as many points seem to fold into one another until they all sound like mush that even Burton cannot save.

These writing problems also fold into the introductions of quoted material. One of the major elements that an author should be able to do well is introduce a quote from a primary source, yet King does not do this. Often King begins by introducing a person with their full title, and then giving a small mini biography about them, then their respective quote about the topic at hand. The problem with this is that King does this regardless of if the person will be mentioned 30 times or once in the whole book. This format can make the people that are involved with Roger's success feel insignificant, as I found myself ignoring who they were, and instead paying attention to what they said, and ignoring everything else.

Overall, I do not know if the publisher was just trying to pad out their sales numbers or what, but clearly, not a lot of work went into this from the editing side of things. Nor did they want to have the expense of using a high-profile author to write this. Perhaps it is because this is (to my knowledge) one of the few biographies on Fred Rogers out there that this was considered more of a gamble. Or perhaps it is because we tend to want to remember than man on the screen, and the show's philosophy, rather than the actual actor in the studio. Maybe this is a case of people not wanting to meet their hero, for fear they will not like what they see. In either case, I would just rent this if I were you. It seems like it is a bit much to buy this at full price. I give it a three out of five.