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IF YOU WERE ME AND LIVED IN...THE ANCIENT MALI EMPIRE

An informative addition to the prolific author’s well-crafted series of illustrated books that make history relatable to a...

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Part of a series for older elementary and young middle school students, this detailed work presents life in ancient Mali through the eyes of a young girl.

“If you were me and lived at the height of the Mali (Mah-lee) Empire, you would have been born in the year 1332.” The “me” referred to in this comprehensive history tale for tweens is a 10-year-old girl living in Mali’s capital city as it may have looked hundreds of years ago. Packed with facts about the West African kingdom and its long reign as a world power, this softcover picture book is part of Roman’s (Can a Princess Be a Firefighter?, 2017, etc.) diverse history series with titles covering such places as ancient China, the Mayan Empire, and ancient Greece. (The author’s nonfiction works also include her extensive If You Were Me and Lived in… series introducing children to cultures around the world.) As with her previous volumes, Roman hangs substantial educational content on a mild storytelling framework, giving young people a personalized way into the subject through a relatable “you are there” device. Readers learn about Mali’s desert geography, housing, clothing, weaponry, farmers and artisans, religious practices, education (boys were schooled; girls stayed home), governance (and brutal law enforcement), food (“grilled fish caught fresh from the Niger River…the fruit of the baobab tree”), and prominence as a major trade route for the export of salt and gold and the import of silk and slaves. (Here, Roman’s reference to slavery, which still exists in that region, is a shade too matter-of-fact: “It was sad, but slaves were considered a valuable commodity rather than people.”) Arkova’s (Can a Princess Be a Firefighter?, 2017, etc.) well-researched images mostly occupy two-thirds of each double-page spread and are rendered in a soft, warm palette inspired by Mali’s river and desert environs. Also included: pronunciation guides, a glossary, and a list of individuals—a king, an architect, a scholar, and prominent wives, among them—who were significant in shaping Mali’s history.

An informative addition to the prolific author’s well-crafted series of illustrated books that make history relatable to a tween audience.

Pub Date: Dec. 13, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-5403-3727-6

Page Count: 78

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: March 2, 2017

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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

THE OSAGE MURDERS AND THE BIRTH OF THE FBI

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

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  • Kirkus Reviews'
    Best Books Of 2017


  • New York Times Bestseller


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  • National Book Award Finalist

Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.

During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

Pub Date: April 18, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017

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NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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