Kirkpatrick (Keeping the Good Light, 1995) tackles a sensitive subject and makes it ring true through acute details and the well-paced growth of her real-life protagonist. Susanna Hutchinson’s family is killed in 1643 by Lenape warriors and she is taken captive. While the nine-year-old grieves, she is expected to skin game, harvest corn, and take on other chores for her Lenape family. Eventually she adapts, and starts to appreciate elements of her new life; swimming, joking, and playing were freedoms her upbringing never afforded. Susanna is ultimately able to forgive her captors, grasping that her family was killed in retaliation for the appropriation of native lands. Where the book falters is in its handling of Susanna’s ability—passed on from her mother—to have visions. Her talent is revered by the Lenape; perhaps too typically in such stories, she’s the “white” outsider who is superior to the indigenous people. When Susanna returns to the colonies, her gift reverts to a minor role in the story, making it even more of a device than a fully-formed facet of her character. In all other ways—even though to be politically correct, historically accurate, and emotionally true is all but impossible—Kirkpatrick meets or exceeds the demands of her story; readers will be engrossed by the unaffected, dense descriptions of Native American life that are abetted by an appendix on Lenape language and culture. (bibliography) (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-385-32600-9
Page Count: 246
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1998
PLB 0-531-33140-7 Ketcham’s first book is based on an allegedly true story of a childhood incident in the life of Johann Sebastian Bach. It starts with a couple of pages regaling the Bach home and all the Johanns in the family, who made their fame through music. After his father’s death, Johann Sebastian goes to live with his brother, Johann Christoph, where he boasts that he is the best organist in the world. Johann Christoph contradicts him: “Old Adam Reincken is the best.” So Johann Sebastian sets out to hear the master himself. In fact, he is humbled to tears, but there is hope that he will be the world’s best organist one day. Johann Sebastian emerges as little more than a brat, Reincken as more of a suggestion than a character. Bush’s illustrations are most transporting when offering details of the landscape, but his protagonist is too impish to give the story much authority. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-531-30140-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Orchard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
Adler (also with Widener, Lou Gehrig, 1997, etc.) sets his fictional story during the week of July 14, 1932, in the Bronx, when the news items that figure in this tale happened. A boy gets a dime for his birthday, instead of the bicycle he longs for, because it is the Great Depression, and everyone who lives in his neighborhood is poor. While helping his friend Jacob sell newspapers, he discovers that his own father, who leaves the house with a briefcase each day, is selling apples on Webster Avenue along with the other unemployed folk. Jacob takes the narrator to Yankee Stadium with the papers, and people don’t want to hear about the Coney Island fire or the boy who stole so he could get something to eat in jail. They want to hear about Babe Ruth and his 25th homer. As days pass, the narrator keeps selling papers, until the astonishing day when Ruth himself buys a paper from the boy with a five-dollar bill and tells him to keep the change. The acrylic paintings bask in the glow of a storied time, where even row houses and the elevated train have a warm, solid presence. The stadium and Webster Avenue are monuments of memory rather than reality in a style that echoes Thomas Hart Benton’s strong color and exaggerated figures. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-15-201378-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
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