Billy the Kid

Traces the brief and violent life of the outlaw who gained notoriety throughout the West.

-- Biographies of famous and infamous men and women of the Western frontier.
-- Entices the reluctant reader to relive the exciting days of the Wild West.
-- Each book contains a glossary, a further reading list, and an index.

School Library Journal

Gr 5-6-- Although only a teenager during his ``notorious'' years, Henry McCarty became a celebrity known as Billy the Kid, and he has been a legend ever since. Green and Sanford have put together a factual, informative book that is illustrated mostly with photographs of people and places associated with Billy (only two have been found of him). An excellent supplement is a recent article and commentary--larded with fascinating peripheral details--by Bob Boze Bell from Arizona Highways (August, 1991). Gunman, lawman, horseman, showman, brave man, and dead man when he was shot in the back of his head by a hired killer, James Butler Hickock lived 39 rough and exciting years. This brief glimpse of one of our mid-19th century ``Wild West'' heroes is understandably written and filled with black-and-white photographs. Most of the books on the eight-item list of suggested readings are out of print or inaccessible to young readers; the index lacks entries for several places mentioned. However, the book is a fine introduction to a man who, according to a bronze tablet at his birthplace in Illinois, helped make the West ``A safe place for women and children.'' --George Gleason, Department of English, Southwest Missouri State University, Springfield