WHEELS OF CHANGE

Name: WHEELS OF CHANGE
Author: Darlene Beck Jacobson
ISBN: 978-1-939547-13-2

by Darlene Beck Jacobson ; illustrated by Marissa Moss ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 14, 2014

Readers will empathize with Emily as she goes through her own changes, and they will applaud her heroism in more than one...

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Changes fomenting both locally and nationally during the final year of Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency are seen through the eyes of feisty, bighearted Emily Soper, daughter of a carriage maker in Washington, D.C.

Twelve-year-old Emily loves helping her father in his barn; she even dreams, in futility, of becoming a blacksmith like her father’s beloved employee, Henry. She and her best friend, Charlie, ponder such things as gender roles, women’s suffrage and “horseless carriages.” She dutifully tries to become a lady even while working on a secret that uses her “masculine” skills. As the year progresses, Henry falls ill, and Emily and her family are subjected to the uncertainties of changing times as well as some nasty treatment from white supremacists. Resemblances to To Kill a Mockingbird are strong, especially during a tea party hosted by Emily’s mother. A nice touch: Throughout much of the book, Papa teaches Emily—and vicariously, readers—new vocabulary words. The strength of the text lies in Jacobson’s ability to evoke a different era and to endear readers to the protagonist. The prose is straightforward and well-researched, heavily peppered with historical references and containing enough action to keep readers’ attention.

Readers will empathize with Emily as she goes through her own changes, and they will applaud her heroism in more than one chapter. (author’s note, photographs, recipes, bibliography, websites) (Historical fiction. 8-11)

Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-939547-13-2

Page Count: 220

Publisher: Creston

Review Posted Online: July 28, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014

Categories:

CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION | CHILDREN'S TRANSPORTATION

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UG

by Raymond Briggs & illustrated by Raymond Briggs ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 8, 2002

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Suggesting that some things haven’t changed since the Stone Age, Briggs (A Bit More Bert, p. 1300, etc.) introduces a moon-faced lad who infuriates his clueless parents by insistently questioning things-as-they-are. To the despair and fury of his dad, Dug, and mom, Dugs, Ug is forever complaining about his stone trousers, wanting something nicer for breakfast than “cold bits of dead animal,” wondering whether the stream couldn’t be “bent” a bit closer to the family cave. He’s not all talk, either, though most of his bright ideas come to naught; his stone boat sinks, his wheel rolls down the hill but has no other apparent use, and though his father indulgently cuts trousers for him from animal hide, they aren’t wearable, as sewing hasn’t been invented. Briggs tells the tale in cartoon panels with dialogue balloons, footnoting his own anachronisms: “No one living in the Stone Age would know he was living in the Stone Age. He would believe he was living in the modern age. Today we believe we are living in the modern age. Time will tell.” Ultimately, Ug fulfills his mother’s dark prediction that he would end up painting on walls, and is last seen beneath his art, still pining for something better. Beneath the satiric barbs there’s a touch of poignancy to this tale of a da Vinci just a few dozen millennia ahead of his time. (Picture book. 8-11)

Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2002

ISBN: 0-375-91611-3

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2002

Categories:

GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS | CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
COLLECTED POEMS FOR CHILDREN
by Ted Hughes & illustrated by Raymond Briggs

- BOOK REVIEW
THE PUDDLEMAN
by Raymond Briggs & illustrated by Raymond Briggs

- BOOK REVIEW
A BIT MORE BERT
by Allan Ahlberg & illustrated by Raymond Briggs

- IN THE NEWS
Children’s Author Raymond Briggs Dies at 88

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THE PORCUPINE YEAR

From the Birchbark House series , Vol. 3

by Louise Erdrich ; illustrated by Louise Erdrich ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2008

The journey is even gently funny—Omakayas’s brother spends much of the year with a porcupine on his head. Charming and...

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This third entry in the Birchbark House series takes Omakayas and her family west from their home on the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker, away from land the U.S. government has claimed.

Difficulties abound; the unknown landscape is fraught with danger, and they are nearing hostile Bwaanag territory. Omakayas’s family is not only close, but growing: The travelers adopt two young chimookoman (white) orphans along the way. When treachery leaves them starving and alone in a northern Minnesota winter, it will take all of their abilities and love to survive. The heartwarming account of Omakayas’s year of travel explores her changing family relationships and culminates in her first moon, the onset of puberty. It would be understandable if this darkest-yet entry in Erdrich’s response to the Little House books were touched by bitterness, yet this gladdening story details Omakayas’s coming-of-age with appealing optimism.

The journey is even gently funny—Omakayas’s brother spends much of the year with a porcupine on his head. Charming and enlightening. (Historical fiction. 9-11)