In a grand tale of 19th-century American enterprise, Sandler pays tribute to Alfred Ely Beach, a publisher and inventor who built New York City’s first subway. The author opens with a positively scary picture of what the city’s streets were like at midcentury—swarming with recent immigrants, clogged with carriages and commercial wagons and made deadly by hundreds of horse-drawn “omnibuses.” Not only did Beach come up with a plan to ease the congestion by building an innovative, air-powered subway, he finessed public opinion, the state government and even the all-powerful Boss Tweed by building the first stretch of tunnel in secret, at night. Having solved massive technical problems as he went, he opened it in 1870 to massive acclaim—and then, just as he was about to undertake a huge expansion of the system, he fell afoul of 1873’s devastating economic collapse. Thoroughly illustrated with period images, this is actually a multistranded tale in which Beach, Boss Tweed and New York itself play roughly equal roles; readers will come away admiring the uncommon ambition of all three. (maps, reading list) (Nonfiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: May 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4263-0462-0
Page Count: 96
Publisher: National Geographic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2009
It took four weeks for illustrations of scenes from the US’s Civil War battles to make it from the front lines to readers’ hands; Morrison (Cheetah, 1998, etc.) explains that process in his uniquely handsome book. Morrison introduces the fictional artist, William Forbes, commissioned by the fictional Burton’s Illustrated News to follow the Union Army into battle at Bull Run. Throughout the day’s fighting Forbes makes quick sketches; it is risky business, and he is often in mortal peril. That night he makes a more complete drawing, which is handed to a courier and taken back to the Burton offices. There, engravers set to work translating Forbes’s drawing to a grid of wood blocks (Morrison includes interesting incidentals along the way, giving the process its due). The images are converted to electrotype, whereafter it is finally ready for the operators and pressman. Shortly after that, the newsboys are seen hawking the illustrated weekly, containing Forbes’s image a mere month after the actual event. Morrison successfully renders the complexities of illustrating newspapers 150 years ago, and just as successfully conveys that in abandoning the wood block for the photograph, some of the art was sacrificed for speed. (glossary) (Picture book. 6-10)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-91426-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
paper 1-895688-87-6 Day uses the prehistoric tale of a young girl coming to terms with her fear of bears to explore the world of cave art. Quennu might be able to handle woolly mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers, but cave bears give her the willies. Her clan’s shaman gives her a bear tooth as a talisman to conquer her fear. On the day when the shaman summons all the people to the cave for an ecstatic painting ceremony, Quennu enters the cave after the others have gone on ahead. At one point she is sure she sees the fiery eyes of an enormous cave bear, yet she carries on, the tooth giving her strength. When she finds her clan in the shadowscape of a great chamber, they are singing and dancing and chanting and applying brushes to the cave walls. Quennu joins in, painting the bear, and putting to rest her fears of the creature, but not her respect for it. Day delivers charged, swirling color and smoky imagery in her illustrations, plus the frisson of transportive mystery that may turn children into future history majors. An explanatory page at the end puts the action into context. (Picture book. 7-11)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-895688-86-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Firefly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
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