Ten great rivers (well, 11, but two are kissing cousins)—and not just the obvious ones—give Peters a chance to fashion 10 fine stories.
The rivers are the Tigris and Euphrates, Nile, Rhine, Amazon, Zambezi, Thames, Mississippi, Ganges, Yangtze, and Awash (which, by the way, is the second largest river in Ethiopia); each has much on offer for good storytelling. Peters keeps the narrative accessible and lively—there are lots of boxed items and much shifting of gears. Rivers tell us much about ourselves (between their banks lies the cradle of civilization, after all), and Peters freely ranges to tap all their mystery and social import: piracy, great aqueducts, Hammurabi’s Code, the birth of jazz, pilgrimages, diseases, colonial malfeasance, poisonous caterpillars. She also cautions that as much as rivers promise, they are fickle creatures. Take the great Harappan Empire on the Indus River. The Harappan Empire? What Harappan Empire? Exactly. Numerous photographs, both contemporary and archival, allow for an intimacy with each river, and where there is no photographic evidence (as with the pharaohs and early-19th-century mudlarks along the Thames, for instance), Rosen obligingly paints the picture in striking colors. More captions would have been helpful, as would identifying which was the Euphrates and which the Tigris on the map of their courses—small grouses in an otherwise crack effort.
A well-turned, involving introduction to important waterways on six of the seven continents. (Nonfiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-55451-739-8
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
Categories: CHILDREN'S HISTORY
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In 1977, the oil carrier Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil into a formerly pristine Alaskan ocean inlet, killing millions of birds, animals, and fish. Despite a cleanup, crude oil is still there.
The Winters foretold the destructive powers of the atomic bomb allusively in The Secret Project (2017), leaving the actuality to the backmatter. They make no such accommodations to young audiences in this disturbing book. From the dark front cover, on which oily blobs conceal a seabird, to the rescuer’s sad face on the back, the mother-son team emphasizes the disaster. A relatively easy-to-read and poetically heightened text introduces the situation. Oil is pumped from the Earth “all day long, all night long, / day after day, year after year” in “what had been unspoiled land, home to Native people // and thousands of caribou.” The scale of extraction is huge: There’s “a giant pipeline” leading to “enormous ships.” Then, crash. Rivers of oil gush out over three full-bleed wordless pages. Subsequent scenes show rocks, seabirds, and sea otters covered with oil. Finally, 30 years later, animals have returned to a cheerful scene. “But if you lift a rock… // oil / seeps / up.” For an adult reader, this is heartbreaking. How much more difficult might this be for an animal-loving child?
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care. (author’s note, further reading) (Informational picture book. 9-12)Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3077-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S HISTORY | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A custom-built, bulletproof limo links two historical figures who were pre-eminent in more or less different spheres.
Garland admits that a claim that FDR was driven to Congress to deliver his “Day of Infamy” speech in a car that once belonged to Capone rests on shaky evidence. He nonetheless uses the anecdote as a launchpad for twin portraits of contemporaries who occupy unique niches in this country’s history but had little in common. Both were smart, ambitious New Yorkers and were young when their fathers died, but they definitely “headed in opposite directions.” As he fills his biographical sketches with standard-issue facts and has disappointingly little to say about the car itself (which was commissioned by Capone in 1928 and still survives), this outing seems largely intended to be a vehicle for the dark, heavy illustrations. These are done in muted hues with densely scratched surfaces and angled so that the two men, the period backgrounds against which they are posed, and the car have monumental looks. It’s a reach to bill this, as the author does, a “story about America,” but it does at least offer a study in contrasts featuring two of America’s most renowned citizens. Most of the human figures are white in the art, but some group scenes include a few with darker skin.
The car gets shortchanged, but comparing the divergent career paths of its (putative) two riders may give readers food for thought. (timeline, bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 10-12)Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-88448-620-6
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Tilbury House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CHILDREN'S HISTORY
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