A respectful, sometimes irreverent and broadly multicultural treasury of dramas, romances, chillers, knee-slappers and...
In this much-expanded version of a 1992 collection, two veteran storytellers present tales that were being told in the Americas, North Africa and on the Iberian Peninsula the day Christopher Columbus made landfall.
Probably, that is. As their conscientious source notes indicate, the 50-plus short myths, legends, anecdotes and animal tales (up from 20 in Stories from the Days of Christopher Columbus) were all gathered from later collections or learned from modern members of indigenous groups. Still, the cross-sectional approach results in a mix of relatively well-known episodes with those that are less familiar. Among the former are “Why Anansi Has a Narrow Waist,” a Spanish version of “The Three Sillies” called “Bastianito” and two verse extracts from the legends of El Cid. Readers are less likely to know scary tales from Aztec Zempoala and Tlacopán, exploits of the clever Mayan “Dwarf of Uxmal,” creation myths from Taíno Guanahaní, Basque, and Moroccan Jewish tales—among dozens of other rarities from carefully specified locales. Despite a generally informal tone (“King Sancho the Eleventy Leventh became angry”), this lends itself less to reading straight through than using as a storyteller’s resource; along with frequent prefatory cultural notes, the Youngs add discussion points, glossaries, and inserted pronunciations for proper names and non-English phrases.
A respectful, sometimes irreverent and broadly multicultural treasury of dramas, romances, chillers, knee-slappers and teaching tales. (introduction) (Folk tales. 11-14, adult)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-939160-73-7
Page Count: 180
Publisher: August House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
An engaging novel-in-poems that imagines one earnest, impassioned teenage girl’s experience of the Japanese-American...
Crystal-clear prose poems paint a heart-rending picture of 13-year-old Mina Masako Tagawa’s journey from Seattle to a Japanese-American internment camp during World War II.
This vividly wrought story of displacement, told from Mina’s first-person perspective, begins as it did for so many Japanese-Americans: with the bombs dropping on Pearl Harbor. The backlash of her Seattle community is instantaneous (“Jap, Jap, Jap, the word bounces / around the walls of the hall”), and Mina chronicles its effects on her family with a heavy heart. “I am an American, I scream / in my head, but my mouth is stuffed / with rocks; my body is a stone, like the statue / of a little Buddha Grandpa prays to.” When Roosevelt decrees that West Coast Japanese-Americans are to be imprisoned in inland camps, the Tagawas board up their house, leaving the cat, Grandpa’s roses and Mina’s best friend behind. Following the Tagawas from Washington’s Puyallup Assembly Center to Idaho’s Minidoka Relocation Center (near the titular town of Eden), the narrative continues in poems and letters. In them, injustices such as endless camp lines sit alongside even larger ones, such as the government’s asking interned young men, including Mina’s brother, to fight for America.
An engaging novel-in-poems that imagines one earnest, impassioned teenage girl’s experience of the Japanese-American internment. (historical note) (Verse/historical fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: March 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8075-1739-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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