An excellent homage to an African-American woman who taught ahead of her time.
An unsung hero and literacy champion whose teaching changed many lives.
Halfmann and Ladd tell the remarkable, true story of Lilly Ann Granderson, an enslaved woman born around 1821 in Petersburg, Virginia. Following the death of her mother, Lilly Ann was sold to a Kentucky slave owner. The master’s children would often play school and included Lilly Ann, teaching her to read. They even gave her an “old ragged blue-back speller…to use and keep,” which she used to practice in private and teach others on the plantation. However, when her master died, she was sold to a cotton plantation in Natchez, Mississippi, where it was illegal for slaves to learn to read. Though Lilly Ann faced much higher penalties there in restarting her school, she expanded her education efforts. However, when the patrollers caught her leading her slave school—the punishment for which was 39 lashes—the authorities found “no law against a slave teaching a slave.” This picture book’s detailed, realistic illustrations were created using acrylic paint and colored pencil. Ladd’s artwork shows Lilly Ann’s determination to improve lives through literacy and will also familiarize readers with the book’s historical settings. An informative afterword and bibliography will make this a useful addition to U.S. history lessons.
An excellent homage to an African-American woman who taught ahead of her time. (Picture book/biography. 7-11)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-62014-163-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Lee & Low Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
A patchwork production, far less seaworthy than, for instance, Sally Walker’s two titles on the subject.
The story of the first attack submarine’s drastically brief career and, nearly a century and a half later, rediscovery.
Even though it was, as the author artlessly puts it, “well-designed and well-crafted in the American spirit of invention,” the H.L. Hunley sank repeatedly in tests and never came back from its first mission in 1864. Rather than go into details about how the submarine worked (sort of), Hawk opts to extend her simply written version of its exploits with tangentially related chapters on the battle of Shiloh, the end of the Civil War, and an undocumented (she admits) legend that romantically links a gold coin found in the wreck with the sub’s captain, George Dixon, and a Southern belle named Queenie Bennet. Likewise, Wyrick’s uncaptioned reconstructions of battle scenes and the submarine underwater (which are not always placed near the actions they describe) don’t serve quite as well as the more informative period views of the vessel and its interior that have been used to illustrate other treatments. The account switches to photos and does go into somewhat more detail when describing how the wreck was found in 1995, raised in 2000, and transported to a lab; in a final chapter, a conservator and an archaeologist describe their still-ongoing restoration work.
A patchwork production, far less seaworthy than, for instance, Sally Walker’s two titles on the subject. (map, resource lists) (Nonfiction. 7-10)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61117-788-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Young Palmetto Books
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
A well-intentioned and good-looking compilation but virtually unusable as a teaching tool.
This picture book depicting 80 historic maps from the collection of the British Library is a self-described Eurocentric creation.
According to the introduction, the maps “give a unique view of how Europeans used to see the world—with themselves as the most important people in it!” But that isn’t the only drawback with this publication. The range in age, location, and historical context of the maps makes for a major challenge to readers of the age for which the book is apparently intended. The maps are organized by continent, showing an assortment of countries, cities, and provinces ranging from medieval times to the 19th century. The maps are unique historic documents, each requiring considerable scholarship to even begin to understand them historically and linguistically. Many are illegible due to the small size of reproduction. In an effort to make them accessible to children, each is dotted with a miscellany of colored labels containing trivia about the region, often unrelated to the era of the map. A 13th-century map of Britain bears a label naming popular dishes in the modern U.K., and a 16th-century map of London refers to West End theaters. Labels on each map challenge readers to find specific items, which is often impossible to do at this scale.
A well-intentioned and good-looking compilation but virtually unusable as a teaching tool. (glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 8-11)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-2281-0010-2
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Firefly
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017
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