A satisfying salute to a little-known act of kindness.
Hungry children in postwar Berlin see candy float down from the sky in this re-creation of a historical incident.
Aside from a fictive point-of-view character, Mandin’s account reflects historical records. In a divided country, in a divided city, pale-skinned young Hilda and other children wander through bombed-out streets, subsisting on scarce rations. When an American airman named Gail Halvorsen sees the reverence with which a group of youngsters shares two sticks of gum, he heads back to base, ties small bundles of chocolates and other sweets into parachutes made out of handkerchiefs, and adds them to the provisions being dropped by the Berlin Airlift—secretly at first, but then with official and volunteer support after reports of a clandestine “candy bomber” hit the papers. “Operation Little Vittles” went on to provide an amazing 23 tons of sweets—“key ingredients in the recipe for healing,” writes Mandin in a lyrical close. If her tidy illustrations of fresh-faced, neatly turned-out young people living in broad streets strewn with clean-looking rubble veer on the treacly side, they do reflect the sweetness of both the episode and the altruistic impulse behind it. Scenes of service people and volunteers include some dark-skinned figures.
A satisfying salute to a little-known act of kindness. (author’s note, bibliography) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781665960588
Page Count: 40
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Sad indeed, but a little bland—though less traumatic in the telling than the stories of Jumbo or the Faithful Elephants...
In this true tale of an elephant that crushed a keeper after peacefully giving zoo visitors rides for nearly 40 years, Fenton tones the drama down to near nonexistence (for better or worse).
Arriving at the Melbourne Zoo as a youngster, Queenie began giving rides in 1905. She became such a fixture that children wrote her letters, her birthday was celebrated each year, and she even marched in the Centenary Floral Parade in 1934. After creating an endearing but not anthropomorphic portrait of her pachyderm protagonist, the author, warning that “Queenie’s story has a sad ending,” goes on to explain that even though the 1944 killing might have been just an accident, “the gentle Indian elephant was put to sleep.” Furthermore, she was never replaced; the elephants in today’s zoo occupy a habitat where they can “do just what elephants like to do.” Neither the incident itself nor Queenie’s end are specifically described or depicted, and Gouldthorpe’s illustrations, which look like old, hand-tinted photographs, put a nostalgic distance between viewers and events.
Sad indeed, but a little bland—though less traumatic in the telling than the stories of Jumbo or the Faithful Elephants (1988) killed at the Tokyo Zoo. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: June 11, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6375-9
Page Count: 25
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
Solid, if not revolutionary.
Albee and Ko take their shot at an early-reader biography about Alexander Hamilton.
Emergent readers (and their caregivers) familiar with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hit musical Hamilton will be rewarded with what amounts to an illustrated highlights reel of the founding father’s life. Albee opens in medias res by describing Hamilton as “a soldier, a lawyer, and a financial wizard,” before the spare text quickly brings readers to Hamilton’s Caribbean childhood, noting his father’s abandonment, his mother’s death, and his determined rise from poverty. He’s presented as a trusted adviser to George Washington and rival to Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, with Ko’s accompanying digital art depicting him with a smiling man on horseback (Washington), while on the facing page, the two other men scowl. A later spread notes major differences between Jefferson and Hamilton, including acknowledgment that Jefferson enslaved people while “Hamilton was against slavery,” but Washington’s slave-owner status isn’t named, nor is the American Revolution’s impact on Indigenous peoples. Personal milestones, such as marriage to Eliza Schuyler, are noted alongside references to his involvement in the war and his work with the nascent American government. While his death occurs on the page, strategies to keep the text within the comprehension of its audience risk undermining other historical content by omitting such terms as “revolution” and the Federalist Papers (though they do appear in backmatter).
Solid, if not revolutionary. (Early reader/biography. 6-8)Pub Date: May 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-243291-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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