In this volume of the Dear America series, Gregory (Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie, 1997, etc.) describes the creation of the historic transcontinental railroad through the meeting of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads. Vital to western expansion, the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 authorized the competitive laying of track by the two companies, and travel was forever changed: a journey of six months by stagecoach, or five months by wagon train, took only six or seven days by railroad. Readers learn these facts and others painlessly, witnessing the construction of the railroad through the eyes of Libby West, a forthright 14-year-old whose father is a reporter for the Rocky Mountain News in the Utah Territory. He risks being tarred and feathered whenever he and other reporters write the unvarnished truth about the railroad’s progress. On the homefront, women are the keepers of hearth and home, facing the hardships of all those who followed their dreams to the frontier. Numerous facts are interwoven, archival drawings and photos are included, and history is brought to life through Libby’s candid narration. (b&w photos) (Fiction. 8-14)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-590-10991-X
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
Prose poems celebrate the feats of young heroines, some of them famous, and some not as well-known. Paul (Hello Toes! Hello Feet!, 1998, etc.) recounts moments in the lives of women such as Rachel Carson, Amelia Earhart, and Wilma Rudolph; these moments don’t necessarily reflect what made them famous as much as they are pivotal events in their youth that influenced the direction of their lives. For Earhart, it was sliding down the roof of the tool shed in a home-made roller coaster: “It’s like flying!” For Rudolph, it was the struggle to learn to walk without her foot brace. Other women, such as Violet Sheehy, who rescued her family from a fire in Hinckley, Minnesota, or Harriet Hanson, a union supporter in the fabric mills of Massachusetts, are celebrated for their brave decisions made under extreme duress. Steirnagle’s sweeping paintings powerfully exude the strength of character exhibited by these young women. A commemorative book, that honors both quiet and noisy acts of heroism. (Picture book/poetry. 6-9)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-15-201477-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Ringgold’s biography of Rosa Parks packs substantial material into a few pages, but with a light touch, and with the ring of authenticity that gives her act of weary resistance all the respect it deserves. Narrating the book is the bus that Parks took that morning 45 years ago; it recounts the signal events in Parks’s life to a young girl who boarded it to go to school. A decent amount of the material will probably be new to children, for Parks is so intimately associated with the Montgomery Bus Boycott that her work with the NAACP before the bus incident is often overlooked, as is her later role as a community activist in Detroit with Congressman John Conyers. Ringgold, through the bus, also informs readers of Parks’s youth in rural Alabama, where Klansmen and nightriders struck fear into the lives of African-Americans. These experiences make her refusal to release her seat all the more courageous, for the consequences of resistance were not gentle. All the events are depicted in emotive naive artwork that underscores their truth; Ringgold delivers Parks’s story without hyperbole, but rather as a life lived with pride, conviction, and consequence. (Picture book/biography. 5-9)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-689-81892-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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PERSPECTIVES
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