A fascinating slice of American history fueled by the power of original ideas and teamwork.
Creative thinking leads to a significant military victory in Pattison’s middle-grade historical account.
“Sometimes battles are fought with guns and bravery. But sometimes battles are fought with walls and a good engineer, like Rufus Putnam….” The author expertly crafts a colorful, fact-based narrative for middle-grade and older elementary school readers around the key role that Continental Army engineer Rufus Putnam played in the Revolutionary War, using his technical expertise to enable Gen. George Washington to recapture the city of Boston from British control. Washington’s troops required walls to protect the soldiers firing cannons at the British, but the frozen ground made digging foundations impossible; nothing short of an engineering miracle would provide a solution (Pattison relates how others, including Col. Henry Knox, QM Thomas Mifflin, and, indirectly, Gen. William Heath, were essential in making Putnam’s innovative design for walls that could be solidly built on frozen ground a reality). In addition to giving young readers an intriguing look at a specific event in early American history, Pattison delivers an empowering underlying message in her portrayal of long-ago figures as regular people who became problem solvers when faced with a high-stakes dilemma and who, by working together, achieved an astonishing victory. The author adds a touch of suspense with Washington’s need to keep the British in the dark until it was too late for their troops to do anything but retreat (“Shhh! If the British heard them, all would be lost”). The clear text is set against Kole’s crisp, full-page digital illustrations that capture people, time, and place in a well-designed cartoon style, with clean lines and saturated colors. Pictorial maps, Putnam’s sketched plans, and, on one page, a brief biographical sketch of Washington’s cannon provider, Henry Knox, blend informational elements smoothly into the book’s design. The backmatter includes biographical information about Putnam as well as specifics about the source materials used.
A fascinating slice of American history fueled by the power of original ideas and teamwork.Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781629442204
Page Count: 34
Publisher: Mims House
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Essential.
A measured corrective to pervasive myths about what is often referred to as the “first Thanksgiving.”
Contextualizing them within a Native perspective, Newell (Passamaquoddy) touches on the all-too-familiar elements of the U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving and its origins and the history of English colonization in the territory now known as New England. In addition to the voyage and landfall of the Mayflower, readers learn about the Doctrine of Discovery that arrogated the lands of non-Christian peoples to European settlers; earlier encounters between the Indigenous peoples of the region and Europeans; and the Great Dying of 1616-1619, which emptied the village of Patuxet by 1620. Short, two- to six-page chapters alternate between the story of the English settlers and exploring the complex political makeup of the region and the culture, agriculture, and technology of the Wampanoag—all before covering the evolution of the holiday. Refreshingly, the lens Newell offers is a Native one, describing how the Wampanoag and other Native peoples received the English rather than the other way around. Key words ranging from estuary to discover are printed in boldface in the narrative and defined in a closing glossary. Nelson (a member of the Leech Lake Band of Minnesota Chippewa) contributes soft line-and-color illustrations of the proceedings. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Essential. (Nonfiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-72637-4
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Scholastic Nonfiction
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care.
In 1977, the oil carrier Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil into a formerly pristine Alaskan ocean inlet, killing millions of birds, animals, and fish. Despite a cleanup, crude oil is still there.
The Winters foretold the destructive powers of the atomic bomb allusively in The Secret Project (2017), leaving the actuality to the backmatter. They make no such accommodations to young audiences in this disturbing book. From the dark front cover, on which oily blobs conceal a seabird, to the rescuer’s sad face on the back, the mother-son team emphasizes the disaster. A relatively easy-to-read and poetically heightened text introduces the situation. Oil is pumped from the Earth “all day long, all night long, / day after day, year after year” in “what had been unspoiled land, home to Native people // and thousands of caribou.” The scale of extraction is huge: There’s “a giant pipeline” leading to “enormous ships.” Then, crash. Rivers of oil gush out over three full-bleed wordless pages. Subsequent scenes show rocks, seabirds, and sea otters covered with oil. Finally, 30 years later, animals have returned to a cheerful scene. “But if you lift a rock… // oil / seeps / up.” For an adult reader, this is heartbreaking. How much more difficult might this be for an animal-loving child?
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care. (author’s note, further reading) (Informational picture book. 9-12)Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3077-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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