An admirable tribute to a life that holds some timely lessons.
A collection of poems charts the life of Lise Meitner, a pioneering scientist who survived two world wars.
As a young Jewish girl in 1880s Austria, Meitner longed to study chemistry, but her options were limited due to her gender. After she finally managed to earn a Ph.D. and became a professor in Berlin, she was “both flattered and annoyed” to be compared to Marie Curie; “no one expects every man to be like Pierre Curie.” Deliberate, delicate verse describes well the blistering unfairness of sexist academia and the complications inherent in having mentors who don’t share one’s marginalized identities. Appearances by other European physicists, including Einstein, Niels Bohr, and Meitner’s longtime collaborator Otto Hahn, show these revered minds as generally forthright individuals struggling against the rising tide of fascism. While at first reluctant to leave the German laboratory where she worked for years, Meitner eventually escaped to Sweden in 1938, where she continued her work with Hahn from afar. In 1946 she experienced the bitterness of seeing Hahn accept the Nobel Prize for discovering nuclear fission—without mentioning her central role. More than that, though, the devastation of the atomic bomb and the Holocaust haunted her. She lost trust in her home, and “there can be no science without trust.” Appropriately, the fictionalized biography ends on a decidedly bittersweet note.
An admirable tribute to a life that holds some timely lessons. (author’s note, timeline, biographies, selected bibliography) (Verse biography. 10-14)Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-66590-250-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2021
A beautiful, powerful reflection on a tragic history.
In spare verse, Lowry reflects on moments in her childhood, including the bombings of Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima.
When she was a child, Lowry played at Waikiki Beach with her grandmother while her father filmed. In the old home movie, the USS Arizona appears through the mist on the horizon. Looking back at her childhood in Hawaii and then Japan, Lowry reflects on the bombings that began and ended a war and how they affected and connected everyone involved. In Part 1, she shares the lives and actions of sailors at Pearl Harbor. Part 2 is stories of civilians in Hiroshima affected by the bombing. Part 3 presents her own experience as an American in Japan shortly after the war ended. The poems bring the haunting human scale of war to the forefront, like the Christmas cards a sailor sent days before he died or the 4-year-old who was buried with his red tricycle after Hiroshima. All the personal stories—of sailors, civilians, and Lowry herself—are grounding. There is heartbreak and hope, reminding readers to reflect on the past to create a more peaceful future. Lowry uses a variety of poetry styles, identifying some, such as triolet and haiku. Pak’s graphite illustrations are like still shots of history, adding to the emotion and somber feeling. He includes some sailors of color among the mostly white U.S. forces; Lowry is white.
A beautiful, powerful reflection on a tragic history. (author’s note, bibliography) (Memoir/poetry. 10-14)Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-358-12940-0
Page Count: 80
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
PROFILES
An impressive sequel.
Boy and fox follow separate paths in postwar rebuilding.
A year after Peter finds refuge with former soldier Vola, he prepares to leave to return to his childhood home. He plans to join the Junior Water Warriors, young people repurposing the machines and structures of war to reclaim reservoirs and rivers poisoned in the conflict, and then to set out on his own to live apart from others. At 13, Peter is competent and self-contained. Vola marvels at the construction of the floor of the cabin he’s built on her land, but the losses he’s sustained have left a mark. He imposes a penance on himself, reimagining the story of rescuing the orphaned kit Pax as one in which he follows his father’s counsel to kill the animal before he could form a connection. He thinks of his heart as having a stone inside it. Pax, meanwhile, has fathered three kits who claim his attention and devotion. Alternating chapters from the fox’s point of view demonstrate Pax’s care for his family—his mate, Bristle; her brother; and the three kits. Pax becomes especially attached to his daughter, who accompanies him on a journey that intersects with Peter’s and allows Peter to not only redeem his past, but imagine a future. This is a deftly nuanced look at the fragility and strength of the human heart. All the human characters read as White. Illustrations not seen.
An impressive sequel. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-293034-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
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