The Polish Jewish writer and educator Janusz Korczak was best known for his medical career and the orphanage he developed and directed under a progressive educational philosophy harboring children’s rights. Focused on the importance of childhood, Korczak was at the height of his much-respected career, with a radio show and published articles and books for both adults and children, when the Nazis invaded Poland and displaced the Jews to the Warsaw ghetto. Ever cognizant of the children’s well-being and fears, Korczak stayed with them, accompanying them to certain death in Treblinka, even when an officer, who valued the author’s children’s stories, offered to save just him. The brown-and-gray toned, often crude and graceless acrylics portray scenes of Korczak’s life and surroundings as outlined in the sometimes undemonstrative, stilted yet easy-to-read text. A lackluster rendering when compared with David Adler’s A Hero and the Holocaust, illustrated by Bill Farnsworth (2002). (afterword, chronology, bibliography) (Biography. 7-10)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-58013-255-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Kar-Ben
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
Spinning lively invented details around skimpy historical records, Taylor profiles the 19th-century chef credited with inventing the potato chip. Crum, thought to be of mixed Native-American and African-American ancestry, was a lover of the outdoors, who turned cooking skills learned from a French hunter into a kitchen job at an upscale resort in New York state. As the story goes, he fried up the first batch of chips in a fit of pique after a diner complained that his French fries were cut too thickly. Morrison’s schoolroom, kitchen and restaurant scenes seem a little more integrated than would have been likely in the 1850s, but his sinuous figures slide through them with exaggerated elegance, adding a theatrical energy as delicious as the snack food they celebrate. The author leaves Crum presiding over a restaurant (also integrated) of his own, closes with a note separating fact from fiction and also lists her sources. (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-58430-255-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lee & Low Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author of Cod’s Tale (2001) again demonstrates a dab hand at recasting his adult work for a younger audience. Here the topic is salt, “the only rock eaten by human beings,” and, as he engrossingly demonstrates, “the object of wars and revolutions” throughout recorded history and before. Between his opening disquisition on its chemical composition and a closing timeline, he explores salt’s sources and methods of extraction, its worldwide economic influences from prehistoric domestication of animals to Gandhi’s Salt March, its many uses as a preservative and industrial product, its culinary and even, as the source for words like “salary” and “salad,” its linguistic history. Along with lucid maps and diagrams, Schindler supplies detailed, sometimes fanciful scenes to go along, finishing with a view of young folk chowing down on orders of French fries as ghostly figures from history look on. Some of Kurlansky’s claims are exaggerated (the Erie and other canals were built to transport more than just salt, for instance), and there are no leads to further resources, but this salutary (in more ways than one) micro-history will have young readers lifting their shakers in tribute. (Picture book/nonfiction. 8-10)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-399-23998-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2006
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
