A poem in the voice of a National Park Service worker today says it best: “The sense that, / after all these years, /...
Readers are invited to recite the thoughts, fears and dreams of all those who came to Ellis Island as immigrants, workers and visitors.
It was a place for Lenni Lenape Indians to fish for oysters, a site for hanging pirates, a fort and, most famously, the entry point for 12 million immigrants from Europe. Now it stands as a National Park Service Monument. Swain provides brief historical background for each period and creates short narratives to perform that are based on letters, diaries, oral histories and print resources. Annie Moore from Ireland was the first to be processed. Many more came from Greece, Hungary, Bohemia, Italy, Poland, Russia, Norway, France and Great Britain. They faced health inspectors, photographers, strange foods, dedicated nurses, helpful volunteers and, finally, if they were lucky, the welcome promised by the Statue of Liberty. All of these experiences are captured in monologues or short playlets introduced by short contextualizing notes. Even children of families who came through other entry points will find resonance here. Copiously illustrated with photographs, illustrations and maps, this is a solid resource in an attractive format for those studying immigration and working on oral-history projects.
A poem in the voice of a National Park Service worker today says it best: “The sense that, / after all these years, / spirits live here, / along with all their hopes and tears.” (source notes, bibliography) (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-59078-765-6
Page Count: 118
Publisher: Calkins Creek/Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
Essential.
A measured corrective to pervasive myths about what is often referred to as the “first Thanksgiving.”
Contextualizing them within a Native perspective, Newell (Passamaquoddy) touches on the all-too-familiar elements of the U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving and its origins and the history of English colonization in the territory now known as New England. In addition to the voyage and landfall of the Mayflower, readers learn about the Doctrine of Discovery that arrogated the lands of non-Christian peoples to European settlers; earlier encounters between the Indigenous peoples of the region and Europeans; and the Great Dying of 1616-1619, which emptied the village of Patuxet by 1620. Short, two- to six-page chapters alternate between the story of the English settlers and exploring the complex political makeup of the region and the culture, agriculture, and technology of the Wampanoag—all before covering the evolution of the holiday. Refreshingly, the lens Newell offers is a Native one, describing how the Wampanoag and other Native peoples received the English rather than the other way around. Key words ranging from estuary to discover are printed in boldface in the narrative and defined in a closing glossary. Nelson (a member of the Leech Lake Band of Minnesota Chippewa) contributes soft line-and-color illustrations of the proceedings. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Essential. (Nonfiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-72637-4
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Scholastic Nonfiction
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
Readers can count on plenty of chuckles along with a mild challenge or two.
Rollicking verses on “numerous” topics.
Returning to the theme of her Mathematickles! (2003), illustrated by Steven Salerno, Franco gathers mostly new ruminations with references to numbers or arithmetical operations. “Do numerals get out of sorts? / Do fractions get along? / Do equal signs complain and gripe / when kids get problems wrong?” Along with universal complaints, such as why 16 dirty socks go into a washing machine but only 12 clean ones come out or why there are “three months of summer / but nine months of school!" (“It must have been grown-ups / who made up / that rule!”), the poet offers a series of numerical palindromes, a phone number guessing game, a two-voice poem for performative sorts, and, to round off the set, a cozy catalog of countable routines: “It’s knowing when night falls / and darkens my bedroom, / my pup sleeps just two feet from me. / That watching the stars flicker / in the velvety sky / is my glimpse of infinity!” Tey takes each entry and runs with it, adding comically surreal scenes of appropriately frantic or settled mood, generally featuring a diverse group of children joined by grotesques that look like refugees from Hieronymous Bosch paintings. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Readers can count on plenty of chuckles along with a mild challenge or two. (Poetry/mathematical picture book. 8-11)Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0116-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
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