The early women's rights and suffrage advocate Elizabeth Cady Stanton is the focus of a readable, accessible biography. She comes alive for middle graders in a narrative with almost novelistic pacing, a dose of humor, and an affectionate point of view. Fritz (Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Beecher Preachers, 1994, etc.) vividly relates how Stanton, early on, felt the sting of injustice in being a girl, and that even her own father was sorry she was not a boy. As an adult, she was drawn into an iconoclastic circle of friends that included Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony. By making clear that many of the early supporters of rights for women were also strongly anti-slavery, Fritz leads readers almost effortlessly through such important events as the Seneca Falls (New York) Convention in 1848, the impact of the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, and Reconstruction and the postCivil War 19th century. Lively, enjoyable fare from a reliable and expert storyteller. (Biography. 10- 14)
Pub Date: Aug. 16, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-22786-5
Page Count: 82
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A promising debut.
The horrors of the Guatemalan civil war are filtered through the eyes of a boy coming of age.
Set in Chopán in 1981, this verse novel follows the life of Carlos, old enough to feed the chickens but not old enough to wring their necks as the story opens. Carlos’ family and other villagers are introduced in early poems, including Santiago Luc who remembers “a time when there were no soldiers / driving up in jeeps, holding / meetings, making / laws, scattering / bullets into the trees, / hunting guerillas.” On an errand for his mother when soldiers attack, Carlos makes a series of decisions that ultimately save his life but leave him doubting his manliness and bravery. An epilogue of sorts helps tie the main narrative to the present, and the book ends on a hopeful note. In her debut, Brown has chosen an excellent form for exploring the violence and loss of war, but at times, stylistic decisions (most notably attempts at concrete poetry) appear to trump content. While some of the individual poems may be difficult for readers to follow and the frequent references to traditional masculinity may strike some as patriarchal, the use of Spanish is thoughtful, as are references to local flora and fauna. The overall effect is a moving introduction to a subject seldom covered in fiction for youth.
A promising debut. (glossary, author Q&A) (Verse/historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: March 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6516-6
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
An engaging novel-in-poems that imagines one earnest, impassioned teenage girl’s experience of the Japanese-American...
Crystal-clear prose poems paint a heart-rending picture of 13-year-old Mina Masako Tagawa’s journey from Seattle to a Japanese-American internment camp during World War II.
This vividly wrought story of displacement, told from Mina’s first-person perspective, begins as it did for so many Japanese-Americans: with the bombs dropping on Pearl Harbor. The backlash of her Seattle community is instantaneous (“Jap, Jap, Jap, the word bounces / around the walls of the hall”), and Mina chronicles its effects on her family with a heavy heart. “I am an American, I scream / in my head, but my mouth is stuffed / with rocks; my body is a stone, like the statue / of a little Buddha Grandpa prays to.” When Roosevelt decrees that West Coast Japanese-Americans are to be imprisoned in inland camps, the Tagawas board up their house, leaving the cat, Grandpa’s roses and Mina’s best friend behind. Following the Tagawas from Washington’s Puyallup Assembly Center to Idaho’s Minidoka Relocation Center (near the titular town of Eden), the narrative continues in poems and letters. In them, injustices such as endless camp lines sit alongside even larger ones, such as the government’s asking interned young men, including Mina’s brother, to fight for America.
An engaging novel-in-poems that imagines one earnest, impassioned teenage girl’s experience of the Japanese-American internment. (historical note) (Verse/historical fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: March 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8075-1739-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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