In tribute to this country’s long tradition of grassroots protests, a dozen significant clashes.
Opening with a claim that we humans are “hardwired” to respond with disgust to anything seen as “fundamentally unfair,” Kluger offers a roster of flash points—most of which marked change rather than directly causing it but all milestones in the annals of American social discourse and attitudes. Some, such as Stonewall, were more or less spontaneous uprisings; others, from the March on Washington in 1963 to the 2017 Women’s March, were carefully (if sometimes hastily) orchestrated. Likewise, if the Seneca Falls convention and 1982’s immense anti-nuke rally in New York were (relatively) peaceful, aggressive police responses made the demonstrations outside the Democratic National Convention in 1968 and the Dakota Access uprising in 2016-17 anything but. Unfortunately, Kluger never explains that in framing his account of the Dakota Access Pipeline resistance as one battle in a centurieslong struggle of the “Great Sioux Nation” against a mythic “black snake,” he is not contriving a metaphor but paraphrasing Native American protesters’ statements. Nevertheless, in every case he expertly brushes in historical contexts and properly notes that not every proud “liberation tale” here resulted in unqualified, or even partial, success. Photos at each chapter head not seen.
Cogent reminders that armed rebellion isn’t the only answer to social injustice. (source note, index) (Nonfiction. 10-16)Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-51830-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Oct. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S HISTORY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL SCIENCES
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Caldecott Medalist McCully delves into the lives of extraordinary American women.
Beginning with the subject of her earlier biography Ida M. Tarbell (2014), McCully uses a chronological (by birth year) structure to organize her diverse array of subjects, each of whom is allotted approximately 10 pages. Lovely design enhances the text with a full-color portrait of each woman and small additional illustrations in the author/illustrator’s traditional style, plenty of white space, and spare use of dynamic colors. This survey provides greater depth than most, but even so, some topics go troublingly uncontextualized to the point of reinforcing stereotype: “In slavery, Black women had been punished for trying to improve their appearance. Now that they were free, many cared a great deal about grooming”; “President Roosevelt ordered all Japanese Americans on the West Coast to report to internment camps to keep them from providing aid to the enemy Japanese forces.” Of the 21 surveyed, one Japanese-American woman (Patsy Mink) is highlighted, as are one Latinx woman (Dolores Huerta), one Mohegan woman (Gladys Tantaquidgeon), three black women (Madam C.J. Walker, Ella Baker, and Shirley Chisholm), four out queer white women (Billie Jean King, Barbara Gittings, Jane Addams, and Isadora Duncan; the latter two’s sexualities are not discussed), two Jewish women (Gertrude Berg and Vera Rubin), and three women with known disabilities (Addams, Dorothea Lange, and Temple Grandin).
Despite its not insignificant flaws, this book provides insights into the lives of important women, many of whom have otherwise yet to be featured in nonfiction for young readers. (sources) (Collective biography. 10-14)Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-368-01991-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
Categories: CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CHILDREN'S HISTORY
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How does a new, truly revolutionary idea become established scientific fact?
Lendler spins his account of how the awesome age and significance of fossils came to be understood into a grand yarn that begins 168 million years ago. He fast-forwards to 1676 and the first recorded fossil fragment of what was later named Megalosaurus and builds on the premise of “The Blind Men and the Elephant” to trace the ensuing, incremental accretion of stunning evidence over the next two centuries that the Earth is far older than the Bible seems to suggest and was once populated by creatures that no longer exist. It’s a story that abounds in smart, colorful characters including Mary Anning, Richard Owen (a brilliant scholar but “a horrible human being”), and Gideon Mantell, “a dude who really, really loved fossils.” Along the way the author fills readers in on coprolites (“the proof was in the pooing”), highlights the importance of recording discoveries, and explains how the tentative suggestion that certain fossils might have come from members of the “Lizard Tribe” morphed into the settled concept of “dinosaur.” Though he tells a Eurocentric tale, the author incorporates references to sexism and class preconceptions into his picture of scientific progress. Butzer’s illustrations add decorative and, sometimes, comical notes to sheaves of side notes, quotations, charts, maps, and period portraits and images.
An outstanding case study in how science is actually done: funny, nuanced, and perceptive. (bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 10-15)Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5344-2700-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
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