The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers

Short Review: It is surprising that there are so few books about Mr Rogers. He is an icon of modern TV. He is held as a near saint by many. But as far as I can tell there are not really any good books about him.

I read The Peaceful Neighbor last year. It was a better biography and gave more details about Rogers, but was focused on working through Rogers as a mainline pacifist Christian. The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers seems to take the opposite tact. Turn Rogers into spiritual teacher that we can emulate and give three steps to becoming the type of Christian Mister Rogers was.

Amy Hollingsworth was a young wife, mother and writer when she met Mr Rogers. She asked for an interview and was ignored as usually happened. Rogers didn't give many interviews. Then she defended Rogers in a letter to the editor after a negative column about Rogers and sent the column and her response to Rogers and was given an interview. That started what seems to have become a fairly close, although mostly letter writing friendship.

So this is half memoir of Hollingsworth relationship with Rogers and half, ‘what you can learn from Roger's' type of book. If you can't tell I didn't think it was a great book. But it was about Rogers and Rogers is interesting. I am glad I read it. But more than anything it shows the dearth of good books about Rogers.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/simple-faith-mister-rogers/