The title gives the small show away. It's a slow and pleasant piece of propaganda to use with reluctant nappers or at bedtime. The sleepy people shown have the same shapes (nearly formless, very simple wash and line) of The Gats (1965) a Herald Trib honor award book we failed to appreciate much at Kirkus. They are shown as a family unit preparing for bed with their eyes tightly closed and the combination of text and pictures urges imitation. The Sleepys go through a routine for bedding down that includes stretching, yawning, singing quietly and snoring. Effective.
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1966
ISBN: 0374370303
Page Count: 30
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1966
The one solid, unassailable accomplishment of this book is to set forth the achievements of the black-supported Republican state government and black officeholders on the state and local levels between 1870 and 1873; as a history of Reconstruction, however, it is emotional and partisan, fuller of blame than of sober, discriminating assessment. Omitted from the impressionistic tableau are the very limitations to the Emancipation Proclamation that the Thirteenth Amendment rectified and the absolute necessity for Congress to give the blacks votes to gain ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment; much that was specifically motivated becomes a matter of amorphous pressures. Neither do even the most sympathetic studies of the period substantiate the Claims made for black militance ("Thousands of new revolutionaries like the Gabriels and Denmark Veseys and Nat Turners Of slavery times had fused into a powerful black fist to help crush their oppressors") or slave transformation "almost overnight into makers and doers," "into farmers and businessmen, students and teachers, lawyers and bishops, jurors and judges, sheriffs and senators." That socially and economically life changed very little for the majority is thereby obscured. Obscured also, in a quote, is the revolutionary nature of the expansion of government services beyond their prewar level. On the one hand more is made of Reconstruction than the facts justify; on the other hand, less. And the concentration on oppression, injustice and terror, inarguable per se, overshadows what explanations are offered for both the inception and termination of Reconstruction. There is much drama (there will be pictures too), less enlightenment.
Pub Date: Oct. 13, 1970
ISBN: 0695801384
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Follett
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1970
Meltzer gives us the most forthright treatment yet of the force behind Hispanic-American immigration: namely, the devastating effect on the Mexican, Cuban, and Puerto Rican economies of European colonialism and later US government and business practices. He shows how American sugar corporations and tax policy reduced Puerto Rico to an island of poverty; states that "The Mexican war was fought for no reason but to grab land that would expand slave territory"; and is tactful on the Cuban immigration: "Middle- and upper-class Cubans had the most to lose under Castro, so naturally they were the ones who wanted to emigrate." Except for the relatively prosperous first-wave Cubans, Hispanic Americans find themselves "at the bottom of the job ladder" and have received a "dismal" education here. (For perspective, Meltzer quotes Colin Greer: "The truth is that our public schools have always failed the lower classes—both black and white.") Meltzer describes the wretched conditions of farm workers, somewhat alleviated by the union movement, that are better known to YA readers, and the effective slave labor system that traps illegals. He emphasizes that the Hispanic-American experience is not uniform: In New York, Hispanic-Americans have revitalized Jackson Heights, where newsstands sell papers from Bogota, Buenos Aires, Guayaquil, and Santo Domingo; yet in Spanish Harlem, an older Puerto Rican community, "the people live poorly." Their very numbers make their problems urgent: one in four New Yorkers is of Hispanic origin, as is 28 percent of the Los Angeles population and 40 percent of Miami's; and this group is growing nearly four times as fast as that of all others in the nation. To these facts and descriptions Meltzer adds an earnest chapter, similar to that in his Chinese Americans (1981), on the folly and evils of racial stereotypes and discrimination. He ends with the example of San Antonio's Chicano mayor, elected in 1981, and the hope that Hispanic-Americans can overcome the obstacles to organizing for political action. Essential.
Pub Date: April 1, 1982
ISBN: 0690041101
Page Count: 168
Publisher: T.Y. Crowell
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1982
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