Lucky to escape the gallows but doomed to servitude in the New World, young Samuel Collier instead finds adventure and a chance to remake himself, away from the streets and orphanages he has known. Carbone frames her story of the Jamestown settlement by the Powhatan prophecy foretelling the destruction of the Powhatan kingdom. The clash of cultures bringing about that destruction is well portrayed, as is the personal class between the gentlemen of the Virginia Company and the commoner Captain John Smith. Good use is made of eyewitness accounts in a telling that far transcends the usual dry textbook summaries of the period. While learning much history, readers will find characters real enough to care about: Ten-year-old Pocahontas racing naked through the center of the fort, Samuel mastering the bow and arrow and shooting his first rabbit, the magic of a New World masquerade in Pocahontas’s village, where Samuel sits next to a princess. Lively historical fiction at its best. (afterword, author’s note, acknowledgments, sources) (Fiction. 10 )
Pub Date: May 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-670-06060-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Innocuous adventuring on the smallest of scales.
The Mouse and the Motorcycle (1965) upgrades to The Mice and the Rolls-Royce.
In Windsor Castle there sits a “dollhouse like no other,” replete with working plumbing, electricity, and even a full library of real, tiny books. Called Queen Mary’s Dollhouse, it also plays host to the Whiskers family, a clan of mice that has maintained the house for generations. Henry Whiskers and his cousin Jeremy get up to the usual high jinks young mice get up to, but when Henry’s little sister Isabel goes missing at the same time that the humans decide to clean the house up, the usually bookish big brother goes on the adventure of his life. Now Henry is driving cars, avoiding cats, escaping rats, and all before the upcoming mouse Masquerade. Like an extended version of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Two Bad Mice (1904), Priebe keeps this short chapter book constantly moving, with Duncan’s peppy art a cute capper. Oddly, the dollhouse itself plays only the smallest of roles in this story, and no factual information on the real Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House is included at the tale’s end (an opportunity lost).
Innocuous adventuring on the smallest of scales. (Fantasy. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-6575-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
Read solely as fiction, this is an auspiciously clever and engaging series opener.
Two Neanderthal preteens weave a tale of everyday life to which even modern kids can relate.
Over 40,000 years ago, tucked into a cozy cave, siblings Lucy and Andy live with their light-skinned and hirsute tribe, made up of their family (mother Luba, father Charles, and baby brother Danny) and another (Daryl and his children, Margaret and Phil, both older than Lucy and Andy). As related in a series of interrelated (and often wittily titled vignettes), the tribe spends its days in quotidian Neanderthal occupations: hunting mammoths, cooking, caring for one another, and making clothes and tools. Brown ambitiously weaves fact into his fiction and ends each short episode with interesting commentary about Stone Age life from two anthropologist characters, a white woman and a black man. At times these facts seem at odds with the story; despite a page devoted to speculation about Neanderthal gender equity, for instance, Luba seems entirely focused on child care. Although Brown makes reference to reading "almost a hundred!” books as research, he offers his readers neither bibliography nor resources to follow up on ignited interest (other than an impressive list of museums to visit). Despite this quibble, Brown’s vivacious plotlines are laugh-out-loud funny, and in spite of the prehistoric setting, this comic charmer should readily appeal to young readers.
Read solely as fiction, this is an auspiciously clever and engaging series opener. (Graphic historical fiction. 7-12)Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-385-38835-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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