This lighthearted overview may well lead readers to further research.
Nine illustrated chapters loosely trace the various ways cultures around the world have dealt with keeping their bodies clean—or not.
The introductory chapter, “Eight Myths About ‘Clean,’ ” includes such clever hooks as a warning to the squeamish about references to “poop, bodily fluids...and other shocking subjects.” Indeed, the text abounds with such tidbits as the propensity of rats to nibble on gentlemen’s unwashed wigs. The chapter on “Ancient Grime” briefly summarizes The Odyssey, using it to discuss the importance of washing and bathing in 12th century B.C.E. Sidebars tell of bathing in the Indus Valley in 3,000 B.C.E., as well as washing habits in ancient Egypt and China, while the primary narrative then revisits Greece (including Athens versus Sparta) and introduces Roman baths. (Readers may find Ashenburg’s alternation of dates and centuries confusing as they navigate this nonlinear history.) The text successfully shows the influences of religion, class distinctions, geography, individual thinkers, and advertising on cleanliness behaviors throughout centuries and over most continents, ending with current practices in Canada and the U.S.—including the ongoing debate about antibacterial products. Colorful pages brim with sidebar anecdotes related to bathhouses, soap, toilets, and surprised international travelers. There are some liberties taken to keep the text simple and accessible, but the myth-shattering is well-documented.
This lighthearted overview may well lead readers to further research. (sources, index) (Nonfiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-55451-790-9
Page Count: 108
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
After surveying “competing claims” for the first Thanksgiving from 1541 on, in Texas, Florida, Maine, Virginia and Massachusetts, Colman decides in favor of the 1621 event with the English colonists and Wampanoag as the first “because the 1621 event was more like the Thanksgiving that we celebrate today.” She demonstrates, however, that the “Pilgrim and Indian” story is really not the antecedent of Thanksgiving as we celebrate it today. Rather, two very old traditions—harvest festivals and days of thanksgiving for special events—were the origin, and this interesting volume traces how the custom of proclaiming a general day of thanksgiving took hold. Yet, since many Thanksgiving celebrations in towns and schools are still rooted in the “Pilgrim and Indian” story, which the author calls “true and important,” but which many Native Americans find objectionable, a more in-depth discussion of it is warranted here. The solid bibliography does include some fine resources, such as 1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving (2001) by Catherine O’Neill Grace and Margaret M. Bruchac. (author’s note, chronology, index) (Nonfiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-8050-8229-6
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A handsomely packaged look back at an epochal achievement.
A free-verse ode to the Apollo program, still the high-water mark of this country’s space program.
Like Catherine Thimmesh’s Team Moon (2006), this album is offered in tribute to the massive, collective eight-year effort to send explorers to our closest celestial neighbor and then bring them back. Slade intersperses resumes for the members of each Apollo crew up to Apollo 11 with extended poetic flights that include significant technical details along with dramatic passages: “Explosive fire. Deafening noise. / The rocket blasts off / above an inferno of white-hot flames.” A prose coda offers nods to the major corporations that developed and built the Saturn V rocket and the spacecraft it carried, then an account of the Apollo 11 astronauts’ triumphant reception back on Earth. Gonzalez’s big, kaleidoscopic montages and page-filling close-ups of tense faces likewise highlight the drama and are so realistic as to be sometimes difficult to distinguish from the photos with which they are mixed. One glimpse of brown hands using a slide rule and an African-American woman (unidentified but probably Katherine Johnson) in another montage are the only indications here that the space program wasn’t an all-white enterprise. Still, it makes a grand—if, so many years later, nostalgic—tale about a magnificent effort.
A handsomely packaged look back at an epochal achievement. (author’s note, illustrator’s note, bibliography, sources, index) (Nonfiction/poetry. 10-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68263-013-6
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Peachtree
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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