An anachronistic, dry account of European explorations of Africa that exhibits little sympathy for what native people endured, and little grasp of how such ventures were often physical and cultural massacres. This illustrated entry in the Voyages of Discovery series opens with a few pages on pre-European Africa, mentioning the rise of the Nok people and Bantu-speaking people. Among early explorers were the Phoenicians, Arab traders, and Christian missionaries. In the 1400s, the Portuguese became involved, trying to find trade routes to India. The slave trade brought visitors from other European countries to Africa's shores, in search of the source of the Nile and the legendary city of Timbuktu. All this contributed to the parcelization of the African continent—except for Ethiopia and Liberia—into European colonies by 1900. The myopic view Martell takes leads to abundant facts about European explorers but not about the havoc they left in their wakes. What's more, the voices of Africans and others are categorized in mainly violent terms, not as justifiably reactive. (maps, diagrams, chronology, glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 9-13)
Pub Date: Jan. 15, 1998
ISBN: 0-87226-490-4
Page Count: 48
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
trike” in New York City and the fate of the sharecroppers in the southern cotton industry, the garment and coal mining industries loom as the real villains in child labor issues. Bartoletti provides numerous examples of how debilitating poverty drove entire families to work in utter squalor and suffer cruel treatment at the hands of profit-driven conglomerates. Personal stories illuminate the wretched conditions under which many of these children labored, with a focus on the instances when a child mobilized fellow workers to demand their rights. The grit and determination of these children who, in the face of police abuse, bureaucratic negligence, and governmental (even presidential) indifference, banded together for a common cause, and the startling black-and-white photographs, ensure that readers will be alternately awed and appalled by this stunning account of child labor in the US. (bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-88892-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
The war experiences of six young people: Hans Levy (b. 1928), who escaped to Britain (his parents died at Theresienstadt); AndrÇe-Paule Godley (b. 1923), daughter of a French diplomat, who joined the Resistance; and, born in the mid- 1930's, a London girl, a German boy evacuated from Berlin, a British boy interned in the Philippines, and a Japanese girl. Their stories exemplify an international range of experience, but unfortunately Marx's reporting is so dry that, even though she herself interviewed these people, not even their own first-person comments bring them to life; she offers few of the poignantly telling details that distinguish Michael Foreman's War Boy (1990) and Howard Greenfield's 1993 book, The Hidden Children (which was researched and presented in a similar manner), or the host of other memoirs. Archival photos that are only indirectly related to the text also contribute to the impersonal flavor, as does the absence of any information about the subjects' later lives. Still, an overview that will have its uses. Maps; index. (Biography. 9-12)
Pub Date: March 16, 1994
ISBN: 0-8225-4898-4
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Lerner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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