by Mara Rockliff ; illustrated by Zosia Dzierzawska ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2019
Unusual and fascinating but flawed.
Leyzer Zamenhof hated war and conflict.
He lived in late-19th-century Bialystok (then part of the Russian Empire), where a diverse, distrustful population spoke many languages. He believed that a common language could bring everyone together, so he began the task of inventing that language. His first attempts were failures, lacking predictable patterns. Adjusting words that already existed worked better, especially those that had similar construction or sounds and could be put together in a logical structure. But while he was studying medicine in Moscow, his early work was destroyed. With his wife’s help, he began again, revising and refining his concepts. He signed his work “Dr. Esperanto,” his language’s word for “one who hopes.” Eventually, a large group of followers from all over the world came to love this language of peace and honor the person who created it. Rockliff recounts the events simply, focusing on insights into Leyzer’s motives and processes in the construction of Esperanto vocabulary, but much is omitted from the primary narrative. Material in the afterword more clearly explains the development of the language and further relevant details about Zamenhof, including the fact that he was a Jew. Dzierzawska’s digitally assembled pencil-and-ink illustrations complement the text and depict time and setting, also providing visual mapping of vocabulary development. The languages that Zamenhof used as a base for Esperanto are never named in the text or labeled in the illustrations, nor, frustratingly, are the Esperanto phrases translated.
Unusual and fascinating but flawed. (sources) (Picture book/biography. 8-11)Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7636-8915-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
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by Elizabeth V. Chew ; illustrated by Mark Elliott ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 4, 2014
Well-informed and much-idealized if not entirely simplistic pictures of both the great man and his bustling estate.
Stepping carefully around the controversies, a former curator at Monticello reconstructs the septuagenarian Jefferson’s active daily round.
Jefferson’s fixed routine begins with a faithful recording of temperature and weather at first rising and ends with a final period of solitary reading by candlelight in his unusual alcove bed. In between, the author describes in often fussy detail the range of his interests and enterprises. There’s not only his “polygraph” and other beloved gadgets, but also meals, family members, visitors, and excursions to Monticello’s diverse gardens, workshops and outbuildings. Like the dialogue, which mixes inventions with historical utterances, the generous suite of visuals includes photos of furnishings and artifacts as well as stodgy full-page tableaux and vignettes painted by Elliott. The “slaves” or “enslaved” workers (the author uses the terms interchangeably) that Jefferson encounters through the day are all historical and named—but Sally Hemings and her Jeffersonian offspring are conspicuously absent (aside from a brief name check buried in the closing timeline). Jefferson adroitly sidesteps a pointed question from his grandson, who accompanies him on his rounds, by pleading his age: “The work of ending slavery is for the young.”
Well-informed and much-idealized if not entirely simplistic pictures of both the great man and his bustling estate. (sidebars, endnotes, bibliography) (Nonfiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4197-0541-0
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
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by Matt Doeden ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2014
Routine assignment fodder.
A standard-issue profile of the renowned activist—one of a spate launched by his death in December 2013.
Doeden opens with Mandela on trial for treason in 1964, closes with a quote from Barack Obama’s eulogy and in between covers the civil rights leader’s long career from childhood to final illness. Small news photos and boxed discussions of apartheid and Steve Biko’s brief life accompany a narrative that reads like a term paper—though, looking at the paltry lists of notes and sources at the end, an inadequately documented one. Along with plenty of similar bio-trivia, readers will find out that Mandela moved from village schools in Qunu and Mqhekezweni to Clarkebury Boarding Institute, Healdtown and the University of Fort Hare before getting a correspondence-course law degree from the University of South Africa…but not why any of that is worth knowing or what light it sheds on his character, achievements and historical significance. Yona Zeldis McDonough’s Peaceful Protest (illustrated by Malcah Zeldis, 2002) or Kadir Nelson’s terse but masterful Nelson Mandela (2013) supply clearer, more cogent tributes.
Routine assignment fodder. (further reading, websites, index) (Biography. 8-11)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4677-5197-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Lerner
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
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