Sentimental of plotline but informative and breathlessly paced.
The seventh (chronologically earliest) entry in the series pitches a young former slave into the middle of the Civil War’s pivotal battle.
Having saved a Union soldier named Henry Green by hurling a live skunk at his Confederate captors, young Thomas finds himself and his little sister Birdie adopted by Green’s unit. Three weeks, an ambush and a quick march later, Thomas unexpectedly finds himself in the thick of the fighting—possibly on Missionary Ridge itself, though the author doesn’t provide a specific location. Rather than go into details of the battle, Tarshis offers broad overviews of slavery and the war’s course (adding more about the latter in an afterword that includes the text of the Gettysburg Address). She folds these into quick pictures of military camp life and the violence-laced fog of war. Afterward, Thomas and Birdie are reunited with their older cousin Clem, who had been sold away, and make good on a promise to Green (who doesn’t survive) to settle with his Vermont parents and attend the school taught by his sweetheart.
Sentimental of plotline but informative and breathlessly paced. (Q&A, annotated reading list) (Historical fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-45936-5
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Even readers mad for all things horse won’t give this more than a quick graze before galloping off to richer pastures.
Bright colors and ornate furbelows flash in this survey of horsey fashion through the ages.
The vague topic and Patent’s accompanying commentary—being noticeably thin on specifics—come off as pretexts for an album of portraits for coltish horse lovers. Unfortunately, Brett doesn’t pick up the slack, as both horses and human figures posing in her flat paintings are drawn with unfinished, generic features, and the various blankets, braids, straps, plumes, fringes, saddles and pieces of armor on view are neither consistently identified nor displayed to best advantage. Grouped by function, the gallery of 14 examples opens with war horses (including armored steeds from an unspecified period of the Middle Ages and an Egyptian chariot confusingly paired to an Assyrian scenario set several centuries too early). It then goes on to portray horses trained to dance, race or compete in never-explained ways as draft teams. Following a final batch duded up for parades or, in ancient Scythia, ritual burial, a pair of labeled portraits, one of equine body parts and the other of standard tack, is shoehorned in.
Even readers mad for all things horse won’t give this more than a quick graze before galloping off to richer pastures. (index, bibliography, websites) (Nonfiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-58089-362-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
A natural lead-in, or better, lagniappe, to Kathleen Krull’s Lives of the Writers (1994, illustrated by Kathryn Hewitt)
From the Brontësaurus Sisters to Mark Twainceratops (“Born Samuel ‘Three-Horn’ Clemens”), a canon-expanding gallery of great writers that will have every reader, dinophile or not, roaring.
For this first in a projected series, Lacey pairs profiles of six renowned white human authors with as many mostly green but similarly named and (to younger audiences, at least) ancient creators of “dinosaur dramas, prehistoric poems, and timeless fossils of fiction.” For both sets she offers cogent comments on their lives and art—“Having invented over 1,578 grunts, growls, and snorts, Shakespeareasaurus’ talent for wordplay is unequaled”—plus, in small, attached booklets, a hilariously condensed representative work for each. “ROMEO: But soft! There squats my fairest maiden! / See how she slumps her cheek upon her claw?” Following each reptilian profile is a double-page spread that presents its corresponding human. Isik missteps in casting both Catherine and Heathcliff as theropods despite clear indications in the narrative that she’s a brontosaurus and he a velociraptor. Aside from this, her cartoon portraits of popeyed authors and characters in, mostly, antique dress add appropriate notes of anti-gravitas. Whether or not some of the riffs pass over their heads, readers will come away with a fund of names, titles, and general expectations that will serve them well in future encounters with literary works that have, or perhaps will, “echo[ed] across the millennia.”
A natural lead-in, or better, lagniappe, to Kathleen Krull’s Lives of the Writers (1994, illustrated by Kathryn Hewitt) . (Informational novelty. 9-11)Pub Date: June 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-63322-098-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Walter Foster Jr.
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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