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WAR IN THE PERSIAN GULF

Name: WAR IN THE PERSIAN GULF
Author: Fred Bratman
ISBN: 1-56294-051-1

by Fred Bratman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1991

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Beautifully produced and illustrated, one variant of the US Department of State's view of the recent American war. Strongly biased against Iraq, it provides just enough historical background to seem complete (including a mention of Iraq's claims of Kuwaiti oil theft), but leaves out any hint of American machinations like the US ``tilt'' toward Iraq in its conflict with Iran. It also accepts uncritically the State Department's justification of going to war for oil. No mention is made of Bush's decision to let Saddam survive the revolts against him (by letting his tanks get away), of the major domestic policy debates, or of the bombing of civilian facilities in Iraq, believed to have caused the deaths of thousands of Iraqi children. Bratman also credits the Patriot missiles with great success, though later accounts have pointed out that they caused more damage than they prevented. This was out of date by the time it was printed. Wait for a more balanced report. Chronology; further reading; index. (Nonfiction. 11-15)

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1991

ISBN: 1-56294-051-1

Page Count: 64

Publisher: Millbrook

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1991

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CHILDREN'S HISTORY

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TORN THREAD

by Ann Isaacs ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2000

Holocaust. (Fiction 10-14)

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In 1943, motherless 12-year-old Eva, her sickly older sister Rachel, and their Papa are forced by the Germans, who have

occupied their Polish town, Bezdin, to live in the Jewish ghetto. Papa knows their lives are in danger and worries what will happen to his girls if he is killed or sent to a death camp. Then one day, as Rachel is walking to their aunt’s apartment for a visit, the soldiers raid the ghetto and carry her off. Weeks pass, and Papa finally hears that she is alive in a labor camp in Czechoslovakia. Since conditions in the ghetto worsen daily and the raids increase in frequency, Papa begs the Nazi official for whom he works to send Eva to join Rachel in Parschnitz; miraculously, his request is granted. At the camp, conditions are terrible—there is little water and practically no food, and the inmates are forced to work 18 hours a day at jobs that are not only difficult but extremely dangerous. Eva, for example, works on spinning machines, where she must keep lint from clogging the machinery by reaching into the moving mechanism. The girls grow weaker by the day, and their worries are compounded by two things: their uncertainty about the fate of Papa the ever-present chance that they will be chosen to board the trains that leave each day for the death camps. While the book is fiction, the author has based it on the life of her own mother-in-law, who survived in the camps even as her sister did. Every word of this radical change for Isaacs (Swamp Angel, 1994, etc.) rings as true as any first-person story told by an actual survivor, giving young readers another powerful testament to the horrors of the

Holocaust. (Fiction 10-14)

Pub Date: April 1, 2000

ISBN: 0-590-60363-9

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Scholastic

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2000

Categories:

CHILDREN'S HISTORY

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CIVIL WAR ARTIST

by Taylor Morrison ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1999

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It took four weeks for illustrations of scenes from the US’s Civil War battles to make it from the front lines to readers’ hands; Morrison (Cheetah, 1998, etc.) explains that process in his uniquely handsome book. Morrison introduces the fictional artist, William Forbes, commissioned by the fictional Burton’s Illustrated News to follow the Union Army into battle at Bull Run. Throughout the day’s fighting Forbes makes quick sketches; it is risky business, and he is often in mortal peril. That night he makes a more complete drawing, which is handed to a courier and taken back to the Burton offices. There, engravers set to work translating Forbes’s drawing to a grid of wood blocks (Morrison includes interesting incidentals along the way, giving the process its due). The images are converted to electrotype, whereafter it is finally ready for the operators and pressman. Shortly after that, the newsboys are seen hawking the illustrated weekly, containing Forbes’s image a mere month after the actual event. Morrison successfully renders the complexities of illustrating newspapers 150 years ago, and just as successfully conveys that in abandoning the wood block for the photograph, some of the art was sacrificed for speed. (glossary) (Picture book. 6-10)