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BREAKING GROUND, BREAKING SILENCE

Name: BREAKING GROUND, BREAKING SILENCE
Author: Joyce Hansen
ISBN: 0-8050-5012-4

THE STORY OF NEW YORK'S AFRICAN BURIAL GROUND

by Joyce Hansen & Gary McGowan ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1998

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From Hansen (Between Two Fires, 1993, etc.) and McGowan, a moving and enriching story of the discovery of an African burial ground located in lower Manhattan. Although 18th-century maps of New York City show an area marked “Negroes Burying Ground,” the land had been covered over by buildings for two centuries. In 1991, the area was once again excavated to build “a new thirty-four-story federal office building,” but this time, a group of archaeologists hired by the US government were able to dig and conduct research. Their discoveries form the basis of this engrossing account. The painstaking methods of archaeologists, and their detective work, reveal much about the lives of Africans in colonial times. Hansen and McGowan recount that “it is as though people who have been written out of history have found a way to tell us about themselves through the objects buried with them,” and that “a people who had no voice when they were living, and who had left no written records, would at last have their stories told.” (b&w photos and illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography) (Nonfiction. 10-14)

Pub Date: April 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-8050-5012-4

Page Count: 119

Publisher: Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1998

Categories:

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT HISTORY | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
HOME IS WITH OUR FAMILY
by Joyce Hansen & illustrated by E.B. Lewis

- BOOK REVIEW
FREEDOM ROADS
by Joyce Hansen & Gary McGowan & illustrated by James E. Ransome

- BOOK REVIEW
ONE TRUE FRIEND
by Joyce Hansen

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UNDER A RED SKY

MEMOIR OF A CHILDHOOD IN COMMUNIST ROMANIA

by Haya Leah Molner ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2010

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In this rich, insightful memoir, Molnar offers a child’s-eye view of life in Romania in the late 1950s. Known as Eva Zimmerman then, she lived in a crowded but loving Bucharest home that included her parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. They are a lively, eccentric bunch brought vividly to life in a simple first-person, present-tense narration. Especially endearing is Eva’s relationship with her grandfather, who encourages her to embrace her Jewish heritage. Her cinematographer father, a survivor of several concentration camps who lost his parents to the Holocaust, is haunted by his experiences. Eva learns from her grandmother the complicity of Romania’s World War II fascist regime in the murder of thousands of Jews. With anti-Semitism still pervasive in Communist Romania, Eva keeps her Jewish identity secret from classmates when she begins school. The author vividly depicts the harsh realities of life under fascist rule: scarcity of food and housing, ideological indoctrination in school and constant fear of the Securitate, the secret police who are always watching and listening. Black-and-white family photographs illustrate this poignant, memorable memoir. (Memoir. 10-14)

Pub Date: April 1, 2010

ISBN: 978-0-374-31840-6

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Frances Foster/Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2010

Categories:

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT NONFICTION | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

SAGE OF THE SUPREME COURT

by G. Edward White ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 1999

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This entry in the Oxford Portraits series is both very good and very useful. White presents a clear biography of the Supreme Court justice who served in the Civil War, studied law, and lived long in the shadow of his famous writer father of the same name. By the time he came to the Supreme Court, he was already 60 years old, but served for three decades more. White creates a vivid portrait of this scholarly and philosophical legal thinker while including rich details of his intellectual but reserved home life and his affectionate flirtations with many women. More than that, readers will absorb a history of the development of legal education, the growth of the Supreme Court, and how law unfolds as a study and a discipline. White is especially felicitous in explaining how the elegance of Holmes’s prose occasionally obscured the legal point he was making. Quotations from Holmes’s writing and picture captions with further details add to the story, and not the least of its accomplishments is to show a man who began the greatest of his career challenges when he was already perceived of as old. Excellent. (chronology, further reading, index) (Biography. 10-12)