Smiling faces aplenty in the scribbly, informal cartoon illustrations give this quick once-over a lighthearted air at odds, sometimes, with what the snippets of text are describing. The authors follow the career of a ninth-century Viking ship as it carries loot and slaves from an Irish monastery into a disastrous storm, is bought and repaired by two young warriors who join the Viking Great Army to invade England and years later is burned as a burial sacrifice after a Saxon raid. A spatter of what looks like real blood on one page aside, the nonviolent pictures show Vikings preparing for battle (rather than actually fighting) or, more often, working and celebrating with their families—surrounded by general printed or hand-lettered comments on the level of “The Viking gods live in a place called Asgard,” and “Viking children didn’t go to school. They learned skills from their family and friends.” Though closing with a dab of later history and a combined glossary/index, this is too superficial for assignment use, but it might lead readers to more rousing treatments, such as Susan Margeson’s Eyewitness Viking (2005). (Nonfiction. 7-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-84507-465-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
Strong rhythms and occasional full or partial rhymes give this account of P.T. Barnum’s 1884 elephant parade across the newly opened Brooklyn Bridge an incantatory tone. Catching a whiff of public concern about the new bridge’s sturdiness, Barnum seizes the moment: “’I will stage an event / that will calm every fear, erase every worry, / about that remarkable bridge. / My display will amuse, inform / and astound some. / Or else my name isn’t Barnum!’” Using a rich palette of glowing golds and browns, Roca imbues the pachyderms with a calm solidity, sending them ambling past equally solid-looking buildings and over a truly monumental bridge—which soars over a striped Big Top tent in the final scene. A stately rendition of the episode, less exuberant, but also less fictionalized, than Phil Bildner’s Twenty-One Elephants (2004), illustrated by LeUyen Pham. (author’s note, resource list) (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-44887-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
A clear, understandable account of a young Jewish boy's terrible experiences during the World War II. In 1944, when Eliezer Wiesel was 15, his town of Sighet (then part of Hungary) was invaded by the German army, who forced all the Jews to live in ghettos. From there, the Wiesel family were sent to concentration camps where, with the exception of Elie, they all were killed. Without fanfare but with dignified emphasis, author Pariser describes the cruelties and horrors of Wiesel's life as an inmate, as well as his subsequent liberation by Allied forces and his future vocation as a journalist, author, speaker, and political activist. Photographs from the WW II period establish a mood of somber witness. With its clear, narrative style, useful bibliography, chronology, and index, this is an excellent introduction to what is undeniably one of the darkest periods in modern history. (Nonfiction. 7-9)
Pub Date: Aug. 15, 1994
ISBN: 1-56294-419-3
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Millbrook
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
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