When Li was 12 years old, the Chinese Cultural Revolution began and changed life in that nation. For Li and her family, the peaceful situation, in which several generations of the family lived together in harmony, changed precipitously. Mao’s revolution destroyed family customs and life. Members of educated, comfortable families who lacked political influence (like Li’s) were forced into reeducation according to Communist principles. Her father was sent to a Labor Camp and she went to boarding schools some distance from Beijing. Her education was thorough but strict. The Red Guards controlled life, destroying her father’s valuable library, forcing false confessions, denouncing people and punishing them in public—a dictatorship of thugs. Told in the first person, the narrative will enable readers to sympathize with Li and feel relief when she leaves to study at Swarthmore College after ten years of education in China. Combined with The Diary of Ma Yan (2005), readers can begin to know about education and life in modern China. (chronology, glossary) (Nonfiction. 12-16)
Pub Date: March 19, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-374-39922-1
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Melanie Kroupa/Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2008
A vivid yet even-handed account of the ill-fated Donner Party—the California-bound wagon train that was forced by impassable snow to camp for the winter of 1846—47 on the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada, resorting to cannibalism when there was literally nothing else to eat. Calabro neither shrinks from nor sensationalizes this aspect of the story. Instead she places it in a carefully constructed context beginning with the start of the journey in Springfield, Illinois, on April 15, and chronicling each unfortunate decision along the way that ultimately led to the company’s entrapment. Making good use of primary sources, especially the letters and memoirs of Virginia Reed, who turned 13 on the journey, the author tells of Virginia’s excitement at having her own pony to ride west. However, she doesn’t limit the story to Virginia’s perspective, but skillfully profiles many members of the party, including Virginia’s dynamic father, James, who strongly favored taking an unproven shortcut, and the intelligent and perceptive Tamsen Donner, who was firmly against it. The result is a combination of well-researched factual detail, a gripping narrative, strong characterizations, and a thoughtful analysis of the historical record. (b&w photos, chronology, further reading, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: April 19, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-86610-3
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
The first full-length biography of an escaped slave who became a leader in Boston’s African-American community, this brilliant combination of clear thinking, crisp writing, and carefully mapped research presents a picture of a man who was more doer than dreamer. Attributing Hayden’s low historical profile to the fact that he was neither a fiery orator nor an eloquent writer, Strangis reconstructs his life from a range of authoritative sources, giving him belated due as a militant abolitionist, a tireless conductor on the Underground Railroad who was instrumental both in making Boston too hot for slave catchers in the 1850s, and in the creation of Massachusetts’s renowned black military units during the Civil War. Hayden’s association with many leading abolitionists, from William Lloyd Garrison to John Brown, also provides opportunity for a good look at that movement’s various philosophies and methods; readers interested in the subject will find the appended bibliographical essay an enticing gateway to documentary material and recent books. An essential volume. (index, not seen, b&w reproductions, chronology, notes) (Biography. 12-15)
Pub Date: Feb. 15, 1999
ISBN: 0-208-02430-1
Page Count: 163
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
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