by Carole P. Roman illustrated by Paula Tabor ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 18, 2016
Though offering less polished prose than in previous series volumes, this installment with its approachable illustrations...
Author Roman and illustrator Tabor (If You Were Me and Lived In…the Middle Ages, 2016, etc.) return to their history series with this illustrated primer on the Oregon Trail during pioneer days.
Opening with a comparison shot of modern Willamette Valley and that same place in 1843, with a young adult in modern clothes in the same posture as a pioneer boy on the next page, this book launches into what life was like for one family on the Oregon Trail. Focusing on the “you” of this book, a 12-year-old boy named either Clarence or Ethan, the story follows the family from Ohio on “The Great Migration of 1843.” Encouraged by an uncle who previously headed to California to find gold, the clan packs up a Conestoga wagon and joins thousands of people in Independence, Missouri, to form a wagon train for the 2,000-mile journey. Kids who have played “Oregon Trail” will find this section quite familiar, down to the supplies packed by the boy’s mother (which are among the provisions players choose in that classic game). The five-month journey involves some politics (the adults elect a leader and a council that settles arguments), some chores (including collecting buffalo chips; the sister’s downtrodden expression in the illustration is priceless), and many dangers, including illnesses like cholera and the treacherous crossing of the Columbia River. When the family members arrive, they are granted free land as long as they farm it, several years in advance of the Homestead Act of 1862. In fact, Oregon was not clearly under U.S. sovereignty until 1846, so some of the details throughout the cheekily illustrated book seem slightly fudged for the sake of the narrative. In addition, some errors appear in the text (for example, Ohio winds up on the East Coast). Roman is at her strongest when discussing typical clothing of the era and place and farm work in the 19th century. She tackles the issues of settlers displacing Native Americans with sensitivity, though she misses the mark a bit when glibly explaining how many had died from disease.
Though offering less polished prose than in previous series volumes, this installment with its approachable illustrations serves as a reasonable introduction to westward expansion.Pub Date: June 18, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5328-7784-1
Page Count: 58
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Tom Clavin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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by Bonnie Tsui ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2020
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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