Students of American history who are not familiar with the artist’s work can find these paintings elsewhere but will...
A broad overview of the American Revolution’s causes and course, paired to select works from a renowned and prolific history painter.
Axelrod has written several well-received studies in American history for adults (Lost Destiny, 2015, etc.), but though he covers the main events here, he too often resorts to simplistic claims like “The Declaration of Independence said that everyone is ‘created equal.’ For this reason, the Continental Congress decided to separate from Britain.” He does draw attention to elements in the accompanying oils, which are sometimes action scenes but more often formal portraits or reconstructions of significant moments. Künstler paints with absorbing realism and attention to period accuracy—sometimes to the extent that the narrative content plays second fiddle to the close focus on exact details of uniforms and settings. His scenes are not always shown to best effect here either, as portions of the larger illustrations vanish into gutters, and some suffer from the reproduction. The artist is best known for his Civil War paintings, a relative few of which are presented in the co-published The Civil War: 1861-1865 with a scanty but reasonably coherent text by James I. Robertson Jr. (Civil War! America Becomes One Nation, 1992). Closing timelines and lists of key figures in both volumes include some additional details.
Students of American history who are not familiar with the artist’s work can find these paintings elsewhere but will appreciate the showcase—more, likely, than they do the sketchy narrative accounts. (Nonfiction. 10-12)Pub Date: May 17, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7892-1253-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Abbeville Kids
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Rosy, bland hero worship.
A panegyric to the “reluctant hero” who first stepped onto the moon’s surface.
Woolf digs into Armstrong’s life from first airplane ride at the age of 5 to his death in 2012, taking some glances behind the scenes but with a focus on heroic exploits during the Korean War, as a test pilot, and in space. The famous line is rendered “That’s one small step for [a] man,” with a disclaimer, but overall the author tells a sketchy tale with significant details missing—such as any mention of the racist and sexist aspects of this country’s early space program. Even the return flight of Apollo 11 is covered in just a timeline and one anticlimactic sentence: “After an uneventful ride back to Earth, the astronauts splashed down southwest of Hawaii.” Ho-hum. All or most of the black-and-white illustrations are (poorly) redrawn from photographs; despite inserted wisecracks and actual quotes, they are so lifeless that even a version of the renowned Earthrise has a drab, distant look. A scant handful of further resources and a space-exploration timeline that spans only 1973 to 2015 follow a closing flurry of tributes to Armstrong’s achievements and character. Armstrong is definitely a historical figure worth knowing…but the recent spate of more-nuanced and -dramatic accounts of the space program spoil readers for choice, and this doesn’t stand out as a first or even second one.
Rosy, bland hero worship. (glossary, index) (Biography. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-12401-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Choppy storytelling doesn’t lessen the power or truth of the stories.
Shackleton works very hard to protect readers from the stories she’s presenting.
Each chapter of this graphic novel recounts the true experiences of a Jewish child who survived the Holocaust, and the stories, told by the survivors and edited by Shackleton, can be painful to read. Arek was nearly sent to a gas chamber at Birkenau and had to watch a girl being pulled away from her mother by the guards. But each chapter ends with the child living in a safe place. This is not to say that every chapter has a happy ending. One boy sees rockets exploding during an air raid. A girl named Suzanne finds shelter on a farm far out in the country and, ironically, doesn’t learn that the war has ended until two years after it’s over. But every segment concludes on a positive note, as in: “Suzanne was eventually rescued by the Red Cross and taken to live with her grandmother in…England.” This makes some sections of the book feel truncated, but readers may be grateful for the relief. Suzanne even ends up surrounded by farm animals in a truly lovely illustration. Whittingham’s character designs are inventive and, in their bleakest moments, resemble the animated sequences in Pink Floyd’s The Wall, which seems appropriate, since the book was inspired by animated films from the BBC.
Choppy storytelling doesn’t lessen the power or truth of the stories. (glossary, timeline, index, recommended websites) (Graphic nonfiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-8892-1
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
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