Embroidered details and the passage of time don’t make this episode from the author’s family history any less topical. Looking back to childhood years, Borden recalls next door neighbor Ted Walker, a young Navy man who served aboard a cruiser at the war’s beginning, then moved to a submarine, and never came back. In sensitive prose arranged as free verse, she recounts time spent with him during his rare visits, of writing weekly letters and thinking of him, and how just the awareness that someone she knew was out there in harm’s way brought the distant war so much closer to her familiar daily world. Parker illustrates with sketchy, subdued scenes that move from schoolrooms and summer porches to tense imagined encounters between enemy ships, then closes in the wake of the sad telegram’s arrival—and later news of the war’s end—with a view of the narrator ruminating, “about the next-door neighbors / on both sides of the war / who hadn’t come home. / So many many neighbors.” Other than the importance of keeping and passing on family stories, there’s no overt message in this understated account—which makes it more likely to leave readers moved and thoughtful. (afterword) (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: April 24, 2006
ISBN: 0-618-33922-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2006
In this original tale of a mute birdcatcher who nets a phoenix and saves his village from a bandit, Lattimore (Arabian Nights, 1995, etc.) shows little of the zeal for authenticity and depth of research that characterize her other works. In feudal Japan, the shogun has threatened to burn down a village he believes is harboring his stolen treasure. Hideo, the birdcatcher, sees a scar on a passing bandit's forehead and an identical one on Nobu, head of the village council, but fails to connect the two until after he frees and falls in love with a phoenix, and then performs several random good deeds. After trying to kill Hideo—who is speechless and unable to defend himself—for the thievery, Nobu hears the phoenix's accusation and instantly confesses all. Hideo and the phoenix disappear into a tree and are last seen, many years later, flying off wing in wing (though the illustration depicts an odd, birdlike creature with two heads on a single body). The intricately brushed scenes are backed by foamy trails of dingy-looking mist to go with the heavily contrived plot. A somewhat superficial background note is appended, which wrongly implies that the legend of the phoenix is a Japanese story, when it is actually found in many cultures. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 30, 1997
ISBN: 0-06-026209-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1997
Who were those daring young men in the first flying machines? Krensky (Lionel in the Summer ,1998, etc.) offers a well-researched overview of both the lives of the Wright brothers and the early development of flight worldwide, in this addition to the Ready-to-Read series, written at the third-grade reading level. He describes the early kites and gliders built by Wilbur and Orville Wright, shows the young men at work in their bicycle shop in Dayton, and details their dangerous experiments at Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills on the coast of North Carolina. Direct quotations attributed to the Wrights are all from their letters of the period, showing the author’s careful research using primary sources. Simplified explanations of a few basic aerodynamic concepts are woven into the text, and other pioneers of early flight are mentioned, including Sir George Cayley, Otto Lilienthal, and Samuel Langley, as well as Daedalus and Icarus from Greek mythology. Two minor caveats are a glaring typo (to be corrected in the next printing) and an illustration showing a cigar-smoking mechanic working on the Wrights’ first gasoline engine (a clear safety violation in today’s world, though a mechanic might not have known gasoline was flammable in 1903, when it was a new fuel). Attractive, realistic watercolor illustrations on almost every page elevate the text and recreate the miracle of early flight, with the cover showing one of the Wrights clinging to the controls and truly flying by the seat of his pants. (Nonfiction. 7-9)
Pub Date: July 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-689-81225-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
