Sheds light on a devastating topic with empathy, sensitivity, and honesty.
Answers to the questions that a Jewish Swedish Romanian educator and survivor of Auschwitz fielded most often.
Until her death in 2022, Fried lectured in schools about one of the most horrific events in living memory. Translated from Swedish, this work is an approachable adaptation of her 2019 volume. Illustrated with plain, almost stiff artwork in muted colors, common questions such as “Why did Hitler hate the Jews?” and “Why did you not fight back?” are interspersed with more surprising queries. Fried’s shock at being asked, “What was the best?” is palpable, yet she gives as much consideration to this question as she does to the others. In response, she describes how she and Olga, another girl, risked their lives to smuggle a few leaves into the barracks. An account that could be framed as utter horror becomes, in Fried’s telling, a moment of breathless joy. Ekboir’s accompanying illustration, sunlight bursting through a tree’s canopy, evokes an impossibly distant hope. Fried closes by reminding her readers that “Are you able to forgive?” is not the important question when there’s work to be done. She draws parallels to contemporary issues such as the prejudice faced by refugees and “racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Romanyism, and Islamophobia.” In her pragmatic words, the horrors of the Holocaust become if not comprehensible then perhaps a little easier for readers to wrap their minds around.
Sheds light on a devastating topic with empathy, sensitivity, and honesty. (further reading, map, timeline, glossary, reflections on identity and society, bystanders and upstanders, questions for a reading group, context of Jewish identity at the time, historical context of the Holocaust, recipe for Swedish hot cocoa) (Nonfiction. 8-11)Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9781957363233
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scribble
Review Posted Online: Feb. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Ineffective and misleading.
This comic-book–like synthesis of the Aztec empire surveys the history and culture of one of the major civilizations of pre-Hispanic Mexico.
The book touches on religion, architecture, education, the arts, and the Spanish invasion. Information is presented in concise paragraphs accompanying illustrated panels. The snappy dialogue within the speech bubbles has a decidedly contemporary slant. However, from the introductory assertion that Mesoamerica is a region of Central America to the foldout timeline that indicates that Cortés landed in Central America rather than Mexico—which happens to be in North America—the credibility of the content is suspect. Imogen Greenberg describes the Aztecs as an “ancient people” despite the fact they were historical contemporaries of Henry VIII at the time of the conquest. The Olmecs were using chocolate by 1900 B.C.E., yet the back cover implies that the Aztecs “discovered” chocolate—over 3,000 years later. The primitive earth-tone digital graphics are either incongruous or anachronistic in many instances. Maya structures and Toltec pillars, which predate the Aztecs by centuries, are presented as examples of the Aztecs’ “amazing buildings.” Not only do they adorn the cover, they are scattered across a sandy, Egyptian-esque landscape that also includes the occasional saguaro instead of the region’s prickly pear cactus. The touted 500-year timeline hardly encompasses 200 years. And there is no pronunciation guide. Companion title The Ancient Greeks publishes simultaneously. Its timeline is said to stretch 3,000 years, including several events that occurred “Way back when,” but its recorded history spans but 200. Neither volume includes a bibliography or suggestions for further research.
Ineffective and misleading. (Graphic nonfiction. 8-11)Pub Date: June 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-84780-950-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
Good fun, if less grist for young would-be Edisons than the earlier outing.
The author of Inventions That Could Have Changed the World but Didn’t (2015) mocks, or occasionally tips his hat to, a further set of outlandish contraptions.
Actually this is more of a spinoff, and an inferior one at that. Several of the same inventions stage encore appearances, Rhatigan’s descriptive comments are more cursory overall, and actual patent drawings have been dropped, leaving only cartoons that supply more yuks than insight into how the gadgets work. Still, some products, such as bird diapers marketed as “FlightSuits,” armpit air conditioners, and the 42-string “Pikasso” guitar built for Pat Metheny, have gone beyond the conceptual stage, and the author takes care to identify the creators of nearly everything here. Also, there are plenty of truly noodle-headed notions to chortle over (or abhor): a motorized baby carriage; a protective tongue sleeve for cat lickers; a frameless bicycle (“for people who needed more excitement and injuries in their lives”); and a baby onesie that’s also a floor mop. In her geometrically stylized illustrations, Aires at least visualizes each invention in action, and her wedge-shaped human figures come in all sorts of primary colors.
Good fun, if less grist for young would-be Edisons than the earlier outing. (Nonfiction. 8-11)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63322-294-6
Page Count: 113
Publisher: Walter Foster Jr.
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
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