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ELSIE’S WAR

Name: ELSIE’S WAR
Author: Frank Dabba Smith
ISBN: 1-84507-006-2

A STORY OF COURAGE IN NAZI GERMANY

by Frank Dabba Smith ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2005

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Using historical photographs from various sources, Dabba Smith offers an ungrounded profile of a German woman who helped people oppressed by Nazis during WWII. Elsie brought food and blankets to Ukrainian women forced into slave labor at her father’s factory, and she risked her life trying to arrange the escape of a German Jew across the Swiss border. Caught and imprisoned by the Gestapo, Elsie spent time in jail away from her children and father before a bribe facilitated her release. While stories of Germans who helped the Nazis’ victims are rare, this piece is so episodic that it isn’t cohesive. The confusing lack of context—about the greater war, horrors, concentration camps, and other pockets of resistance—leaves Elsie looking like an isolated hero. Bits of fictionalization belong to an earlier era of children’s nonfiction. Inoffensive as an addition to a broader curriculum, but—unlike Dabba Smith’s stunningly powerful My Secret Camera—mediocre on its own. (introduction, postscript) (Nonfiction. 8-12)

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2005

ISBN: 1-84507-006-2

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Frances Lincoln

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2005

Categories:

CHILDREN'S HISTORY

IF YOU LIVED DURING THE PLIMOTH THANKSGIVING

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IF YOU LIVED DURING THE PLIMOTH THANKSGIVING

by Chris Newell ; illustrated by Winona Nelson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 2, 2021

Essential.

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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

Categories:

CHILDREN'S HISTORY | CHILDREN'S HOLIDAYS & CELEBRATIONS

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OIL

by Jonah Winter ; illustrated by Jeanette Winter ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 31, 2020

Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care.

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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)