With an appealing design and many black-and-white photographs, this paints a vivid, detailed picture of an important labor...
A skillful, compelling account of the complicated history of César Chávez and the farm workers movement, set in the context of the social and political tensions of the times.
“We used to own our slaves. Now we just rent them,” said a farmer in Harvest of Shame, a 1960 documentary about migrant workers. Union leader Chávez started picking produce as an adolescent and knew firsthand the brutal conditions farmworkers endured. Driven to change those conditions and raise wages, Chávez worked ceaselessly to organize California’s migrant workers into a union, which became the United Farm Workers. It successfully pioneered the use of boycotts to support strikes and adopted techniques such as fasting and protest marches from Gandhi and the civil rights movement. But hard-won victories were followed by setbacks at the hands of powerful farm owners and their Teamster allies. The UFW also suffered from increasing tension between Chávez and Filipino-American union leaders, while others criticized Chávez’s emphasis on Catholicism and his aversion to dissent. Brimner’s evenhanded, well-researched narrative uses apt quotes to convey a sense of the people, their actions and their emotions. Appropriately enough, green and purple accent the pages.
With an appealing design and many black-and-white photographs, this paints a vivid, detailed picture of an important labor movement and its controversial yet inspiring leader. (author’s note, further reading, websites, places to visit, source notes, index) (Nonfiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59078-997-1
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Calkins Creek/Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
While 11 is a time in a girl’s life when her body is undergoing changes, Linnet’s physical changes are highly unusual—she is growing wings. To her amazement, this bizarre fact doesn’t surprise her mother Sarah, who it turns out also had wings at Linnet’s age. But Linnet’s grandmother had cut off Sarah’s wings, not being able to imagine her navigating her way though life with them. After the school term ends, Linnet insists on going to look for, as she puts it, “anyone else like me.” After several days of travel and after being abandoned by her mother, Linnet ends up at her grandmother’s, who takes Linnet to an isolated house way up in the mountains, a secret place where other winged people live. Safe in the community of others like herself, Linnet and one of the others, Andy, try to teach themselves to fly but for various aeronautical reasons, they are both unable to. Linnet and Andy finally realize that they are unwilling to hide for the rest of their lives, even if it means being called freaks by intolerant people. The two kids decide to take their chances in the outside world with non-winged people. Oddly, there is not much explanation and surprisingly little discussion in the book about how and why these particular people grew wings and what the significance is. While a few theories are bandied about, none are really explored. The plot and characterizations are not skillfully crafted enough to allow a suspension of disbelief, and the book veers towards pomposity, seemingly raising weighty, philosophical themes, but never really taking flight. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-618-07405-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2000
A solitary teenager discovers some distinguished company sharing his private place in this beguilingly matter-of-fact ghost story. The Cotswolds hilltop visible from Evan’s bedroom window has always been special to him, but never so much as after the day he climbs up to survey the surrounding countryside and finds a child with antique dress and manners sitting next to him. Her name is Alice, she says, before vanishing as mysteriously as she came. Being reasonably well-read, he recognizes her almost immediately—as readers will, if not from her description, then from Bailey’s Tenniel-style illustrations. She returns on subsequent days, to borrow his binoculars, play croquet (with wooden mallets), and make odd, past-tense pronouncements. Before bidding him goodbye, she tells him that she once stayed in the room that is now his, and also loved the hilltop. King-Smith ends on a warmly sentimental note, fast-forwarding more than six decades to a scene in which Evan, now an old man, takes his 12-year-old granddaughter up the hill to tell her about the encounter. Aside from its literary pleasures, this perfect little jewel of a tale will prompt readers to think about the places that are special in their own lives. (Fiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-517-80047-0
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
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