Move over Casey Jones—John Blair is a legitimate hero who helped save the lives of 300 passengers on a train caught in a terrifying firestorm in Minnesota in 1894. Nobisso (Hot-Cha-Cha!, 1998, etc.) tells the story with careful attention to the sequence of events along with vivid descriptions of the heat, fire, and fear. Through it all, John Blair emerges as a man of extraordinary bravery, compassion, and dedication to duty. Rose’s watercolor illustrations bring the fearsome scenes to life, conveying the thick black smoke and the orange glow of the menacing fire, as well as the terror. The major flaw in the book is the blur between anecdotal history and storytelling. Nobisso incorporates a great deal of conversation into the narrative. Herein lies the dilemma: are these conversations direct quotes from Blair’s report and witnesses’ testimony, or are they the author’s creations? An epilogue presents a great deal of additional information and gives some indication of the author’s research and depth of knowledge. But there is no actual documentation. As it currently stands, the book appears to be historical fiction. As such it is an exciting introduction to a little-known incident in American history and to a genuine African-American hero. (Picture book. 8-10)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-618-01560-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2000
Adler (Child of the Warsaw Ghetto, not reviewed, 1995, etc.) continues a series of picture books set during WW II with this true account of a young Jewish child's concealment by a family of Dutch farmers. In Ritz's potently somber watercolors, the fears of Lore Baer, only four, come through clearly, first as she sees soldiers arrest her grandfather, then when she is left with a half-Christian couple by her worried parents, and finally during her days as the ``niece'' of the Schoutens, fleeing to the next town or hiding in the barn with other fugitives whenever searchers come. So ingrained does her fear of discovery become that when her parents track her down two years later at war's end, she shyly ducks out of sight and only slowly comes to trust them again. In precise but not brutal terms, Adler briefly describes events leading up to the occupation of the Netherlands and the experiences of those who went into hiding, then brings their stories up to the present in an afterword. So real and clearly explained is Lore's anxiety that to younger readers the events that compelled it will not seem remote at all. (Picture book/nonfiction. 8-10)
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1997
ISBN: 0-8234-1288-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1997
Cast as one of a 3,000-year-old newspaper's series of retrospective issues on particular topics, this gathers fabricated interviews, memoirs, on-the-scene reports, obituaries, and even advertisements (``KEEP ON COURSE: Has your compass been letting you down?'') for a peculiar view of the history of Earth's exploration, from the Polynesian expansion 2,500 years ago to Jacques Piccard's 1960 descent into the Marianas Trench. Although Sacajawea, Mary Kingsley, Chang Chi'en and Seedy Mubarik Bombay join the usual cast of adventurers, the information here is all thoroughly recycled, and sometimes questionable—Peary may never actually have reached the North Pole, for instance—while the approach is quaintly Eurocentric: All dates are in b.c. or a.d., there are no non-European explorers on the world map, and Livingstone ``was the first explorer to . . . see the Victoria Falls.'' With well-leaded texts and full-color illustrations, the pages look nothing like a newspaper's, but that's not the only time the conceit falters. (index, not seen, maps, diagrams, charts, chronology) (Nonfiction. 8-10)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-7636-0314-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1997
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