A poem in the voice of a National Park Service worker today says it best: “The sense that, / after all these years, /...
Readers are invited to recite the thoughts, fears and dreams of all those who came to Ellis Island as immigrants, workers and visitors.
It was a place for Lenni Lenape Indians to fish for oysters, a site for hanging pirates, a fort and, most famously, the entry point for 12 million immigrants from Europe. Now it stands as a National Park Service Monument. Swain provides brief historical background for each period and creates short narratives to perform that are based on letters, diaries, oral histories and print resources. Annie Moore from Ireland was the first to be processed. Many more came from Greece, Hungary, Bohemia, Italy, Poland, Russia, Norway, France and Great Britain. They faced health inspectors, photographers, strange foods, dedicated nurses, helpful volunteers and, finally, if they were lucky, the welcome promised by the Statue of Liberty. All of these experiences are captured in monologues or short playlets introduced by short contextualizing notes. Even children of families who came through other entry points will find resonance here. Copiously illustrated with photographs, illustrations and maps, this is a solid resource in an attractive format for those studying immigration and working on oral-history projects.
A poem in the voice of a National Park Service worker today says it best: “The sense that, / after all these years, / spirits live here, / along with all their hopes and tears.” (source notes, bibliography) (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-59078-765-6
Page Count: 118
Publisher: Calkins Creek/Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
Readers can count on plenty of chuckles along with a mild challenge or two.
Rollicking verses on “numerous” topics.
Returning to the theme of her Mathematickles! (2003), illustrated by Steven Salerno, Franco gathers mostly new ruminations with references to numbers or arithmetical operations. “Do numerals get out of sorts? / Do fractions get along? / Do equal signs complain and gripe / when kids get problems wrong?” Along with universal complaints, such as why 16 dirty socks go into a washing machine but only 12 clean ones come out or why there are “three months of summer / but nine months of school!" (“It must have been grown-ups / who made up / that rule!”), the poet offers a series of numerical palindromes, a phone number guessing game, a two-voice poem for performative sorts, and, to round off the set, a cozy catalog of countable routines: “It’s knowing when night falls / and darkens my bedroom, / my pup sleeps just two feet from me. / That watching the stars flicker / in the velvety sky / is my glimpse of infinity!” Tey takes each entry and runs with it, adding comically surreal scenes of appropriately frantic or settled mood, generally featuring a diverse group of children joined by grotesques that look like refugees from Hieronymous Bosch paintings. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Readers can count on plenty of chuckles along with a mild challenge or two. (Poetry/mathematical picture book. 8-11)Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0116-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care.
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)Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3077-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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