Brown (A Voice from the Wilderness, 2001, etc.) continues his series of picture-book biographies of lesser-known figures with a tale of the life of Saint Columcille, the sixth-century prince and monk better known by the Latin form of his name, Columba. In Ireland in Columcille’s time, “Reading and writing were like magic, and the people who knew their secrets as rare as wizards. Columcille became one of them.” When a former teacher, Finnian, would not permit him to copy a book of psalms, he did so in secret. The high king Diarmait ruled that the copy, too, belonged to Finnian and a fierce battle erupted. Though Columcille got his book back, he was devastated at the bloodshed, and took a leather boat to Iona, off the coast of Scotland. The monastery he founded there, and its scriptorium, dispatched books “like small boats on a dark and wild sea.” Reading as magical and books as worthy of being fought over are lovely lessons laid out in this powerful story. Brown’s usual tender watercolors take on a darker hue. Double-paged, wordless spreads of the battle and of the sea add to the depth of the images, as do lucid step-by-step pictures of the making of a manuscript book and the building of a coracle (leather boat). An alphabet of exquisite Irish uncial letters and an author’s note add to the richness. This works on many levels to delight and to inspire: as a stirring read-aloud, as a saint’s biography, and as a beautiful picture book. (bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 6-10)
Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7613-1534-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2002
In this fictionalized episode from the Battle of Long Island, 22-year-old Lieutenant Benjamin Tallmadge wrestles belatedly with the reality of killing and the possibility of being killed on the battlefield. Then, during Washington’s retreat, he risks his life by going back to rescue his beloved horse from the Hessians. To judge from the heavy dose of appended historical information, resource lists, personal statements and other backmatter, both author and illustrator engaged in meticulous research, but it’s not much in evidence in the finished product. Farnsworth lays on (documented, to be sure) heavy rain, smoke and fog to create impressionistic scenes of battle and general misery, while Castrovilla leans more on melodrama than details that modern readers would be able to supply or infer. She also provides only tantalizing references to Tallmadge’s distinguished later career. In addition, the old map reprinted on the endpapers is both hard to read and partially covered by the jacket flaps. This young officer’s crisis of conscience makes a worthy theme to explore, but young students will gain more insight into the soldiers’ war from such conventional nonfiction as Richard Ammon’s Valley Forge (2004). (Nonfiction. 7-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 1-59078-427-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Calkins Creek/Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Free of gore, but replete with scenes of large, toothy predators eyeing, or sometimes rushing directly at viewers, this introduction to extinct sharks and their relatives is a definite goosebump-raiser. Billing sharks as “one of the greatest success stories of life on Earth,” and scattering deliciously hard-to-pronounce names—Cladoselache, Spathobathis, Sclerorhynchus—liberally through the short passages of text, Bradley mentions what little is known about each predator, but also points out possible or probable parallels in modern species. He groups his fishy fiends by era, going for drama over meticulous detail in depicting them attacking prey or cruising past contemporaneous sea life and adding on each spread to-scale silhouettes of a human diver and a modern great white for comparison. Capped by an all-too-close look at the Cenozoic era’s ridiculously immense Carcharodon Megalodon, here’s a riveting addition to the dinosaur shelves. Take off design points, though, for placing art and information under the jacket flaps. (glossary, further reading, bibliography) (Nonfiction. 8-10)
Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-8118-4878-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2007
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