A sketchily told, if more elaborately illustrated, tale of Pompeii’s destruction as witnessed by two young natives. When the city’s formerly bright, bustling streets begin to fill with ash and choking gasses, Tranio and Livia run for the harbor, to stow away aboard a departing merchant vessel. Later, they watch from the deck as Vesuvius, “Gentle Mountain,” blows its top, sending “streams of molten liquid” over “a nearby town,” before burying Pompeii. In contrast to the rather sparsely detailed text, Balit draws every Pompeiian cobblestone and street sign with fussy precision, meanwhile capturing a sense of period by placing robed human figures topped with tight ringlets in stylized poses. She closes with a large-scale map and a small-type description of Pompeii’s modern excavation. A few morsels of fact, a few of story: likely only to whet readers’ appetites for fuller accounts, such as Shelley Tanaka’s Buried City of Pompeii (1997). (Historical fiction/picture book. 8-10)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-8050-7324-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author of the “Young American Voices” series takes readers considerably further into the past for a slave’s-eye view of life in Emperor Augustus’s household. Actually, young Galen’s life is not too bad; a well-educated son of a Greek muralist, he is fed and housed comfortably, never subjected to corporal punishment—though threatened with it by bullying nemesis Agrippa, Augustine’s grandson—and has such light duties that he’s even able to spend time with an outside friend, Micio. Despite one misguided attempt at dialect—Micio: “I’m with the Greens. They’re the best team, ya know. Wanna see the stable?”—Moss expertly folds real people and incidents, as well as carefully researched details about daily life, from food and dress to chariot racing, into a suspenseful tale in which Galen wins freedom by uncovering a (historical) plot to assassinate Augustus. As usual, Moss’s hand-lettered text is easy to read, and the small, simply drawn vignettes scattered between passages and down the margins add additional color to the lively narrative. She establishes her bona fides in a final note, and covers both sets of endpapers with maps, explanations, and supplementary information. For readers not yet up to Carol Lawrence’s Roman Mystery series, this makes an equally agreeable combination of story and history. (glossary) (Fiction. 8-10)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-15-216535-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Silver Whistle/Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Does Carlson (Boss of the Plains: The Hat That Won the West, 1998, etc.) invest the sewing machine with more significance than it really merits? Perhaps, but she describes the invention’s development, and the changes it heralded in both the clothing industry and the world’s wardrobes, with such effervescence that even readers able to see how threadbare her case is will forgive her. Though she drops several important names, Isaac Singer plays the central role in her drama—first, for solving a major design problem of early sewing machines with the help of a spring from his son’s toy popgun, then for correctly guessing that he could sell zillions of the improved devices to the working classes on the installment plan. But even the lively text pales next to the sheaves of 19th-century photos and prints, which range from intimate, aw-shucks pictures of swaddled babies to teeming factory scenes, from advertisements featuring knobby conventional machines to downright weird models shaped like human or animal figures. Few are the 19th-century’s technological fruits that can rival the sewing machine for worldwide ubiquity and staying power; Carlson gives it its due with this rousing tribute. (bibliography, Web sites) (Nonfiction. 8-10)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7613-2706-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Millbrook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2003
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