Essential reading for all students of America’s complex history and culture.
Yep lays down another course of his now monumental, seven-generation family chronicle begun in Dragonwings (1975) with this tale of two Wyoming Territory outsiders—one an illegitimate white child, the other a US-born son of a Chinese coal miner—who witness the Rock Springs massacre, one of the most savage race riots in our history.
In alternating chapters (and typefaces), Joseph Young, or “Precious Light” as his father insists on calling him, and Michael Purdy, the washerwoman’s son, track rising tensions between the town’s Chinese and non-Chinese residents, as they themselves forge a secret, uncertain alliance in a fossil-filled cave they dub Star Rock. As hostile confrontations and public rallies gradually escalate into an all-out, armed assault on the Chinese camp, Yep methodically exposes the ugliness of racial hatred, with characters on both sides justifying irrational stances fueled by fear, misdirected anger, malicious intentions, and misunderstanding. Star Rock isn’t the only sign that better relations are possible, however, for to his astonishment, Michael finds his previously intolerant mother sheltering Joseph and his father from the general slaughter until they can flee—and the tale ends with both families about to re-connect in San Francisco. “You have the right dream,” a wiser Joseph tells his father Otter (protagonist of Dragon’s Gate [1993], and here a reviled, steadfastly pacifistic adult). “There just have to be more of us making that dream happen.” Yep caps his strong, chilling story with a historical afterword, then maps out his saga’s past and future episodes.
Essential reading for all students of America’s complex history and culture. (Fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: March 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-06-027522-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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