A purpose-driven patchwork, it nonetheless illuminates two little-known episodes that left deep and lasting impressions on...
Historical perspective shares the front seat with plot in this scholar’s bilingual portrait of a small New Mexico community struck by the Great Flu Epidemic of 1918.
Painted illustrations done in a naïve style embellish the sense of place and period in Lamadrid’s child-centered picture of life on the Dominguez family farm in Chamisal. In lengthy side-by-side English and Spanish passages, he blends fiction and history to chronicle the rising tide of anxiety as news comes of a deadly influencia creeping closer, at last striking even in nearby Embudo. No cure exists, but traditional herbal remedies combined with memories of a smallpox epidemic a century before that had been successfully treated by traveling groups of inoculated children—known still as los Niños Héroes—provide some comfort. The author ends with hopeful signs of the pandemic’s passing and a biographical note, then hands the reins to a fellow academic for a general overview of both the smallpox and the influenza epidemics in New Mexican history.
A purpose-driven patchwork, it nonetheless illuminates two little-known episodes that left deep and lasting impressions on Southwestern culture. (glossary, scholarly bibliography) (Historical fiction. 10-13, adult)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8263-4979-8
Page Count: 60
Publisher: Univ. of New Mexico
Review Posted Online: Aug. 9, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A poignant and relevant retelling of a child immigrant’s struggle to recover from an accident and feel at home in America.
In the 1960s, Ruthie Mizrahi, a young Jewish Cuban immigrant to New York City, spends nearly a year observing her family and friends from her bed.
Before the accident, Ruthie’s chief goals are to graduate out of the “dumb class” for remedial students, to convince her parents to buy her go-go boots, and to play hopscotch with other kids in her Queens apartment building. But after Papi’s Oldsmobile is involved in a fatal multicar collision, Ruthie’s leg is severely broken. The doctor opts to immobilize both legs in a body cast that covers Ruthie from chest to toes. Bedridden and lonely, Ruthie knows she’s “lucky” to be alive, but she’s also “broken.” She begins collecting stories from her Jewban grandparents; her fellow young immigrant friends, Belgian Danielle and Indian Ramu; her “flower power” tutor, Joy; and her vibrant Mexican neighbor, Chicho, an artist who teaches her about Frida Kahlo. Ruthie also prays and writes letters to God, Shiva, and Kahlo, asking them for guidance, healing, and forgiveness. A cultural anthropologist and poet, the author based the book on her own childhood experiences, so it’s unsurprising that Ruthie’s story rings true. The language is lyrical and rich, the intersectionality—ethnicity, religion, class, gender—insightful, and the story remarkably engaging, even though it takes place primarily in the island of Ruthie’s bedroom.
A poignant and relevant retelling of a child immigrant’s struggle to recover from an accident and feel at home in America. (Historical fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: April 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-54644-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
The bird’s-eye view into this pivotal moment provides a powerful story, one that adults will applaud—but between the...
The ugly brutality of the Jim Crow South is recounted in dulcet, poetic tones, creating a harsh and fascinating blend.
Fact and fiction pair in the story of Rose Lee Carter, 13, as she copes with life in a racially divided world. It splits wide open when a 14-year-old boy from Chicago named Emmett Till goes missing. Jackson superbly blends the history into her narrative. The suffocating heat, oppression, and despair African-Americans experienced in 1955 Mississippi resonate. And the author effectively creates a protagonist with plenty of suffering all her own. Practically abandoned by her mother, Rose Lee is reviled in her own home for the darkness of her brown skin. The author ably captures the fear and dread of each day and excels when she shows the peril of blacks trying to assert their right to vote in the South, likely a foreign concept to today’s kids. Where the book fails, however, is in its overuse of descriptors and dialect and the near-sociopathic zeal of Rose Lee's grandmother Ma Pearl and her lighter-skinned cousin Queen. Ma Pearl is an emotionally remote tyrant who seems to derive glee from crushing Rose Lee's spirits. And Queen is so glib and self-centered she's almost a cartoon.
The bird’s-eye view into this pivotal moment provides a powerful story, one that adults will applaud—but between the avalanche of old-South homilies and Rose Lee’s relentlessly hopeless struggle, it may be a hard sell for younger readers. (Historical fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-544-78510-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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