In a brief episode exploring the theme of challenging gender roles that is loosely based on local history, the devastating flu epidemic of 1918 tests a Vermont child’s resolution to become a country doctor like her father. Resisting her mother’s insistence that it’s no job for a woman, Margaret cajoles her father at last into allowing her to accompany him on house calls. She proves an able assistant—but needs all her skills and stomach later that winter when, on the way to a remote relative’s with her little brother, she comes upon a farmhouse with a nearly dead dog outside, and inside only a small child shivering among the bodies of her stricken family. In a quick final chapter, Margaret grows up to achieve her heart’s desire, and even to see her own little daughter show early signs of continuing the family profession. Kinsey-Warnock (Lumber Camp Library, below, etc.) folds in a subplot involving a beloved uncle who comes back from the war deeply depressed and minus an arm, slips in a snippet about Elizabeth Blackwell for further role-modeling, and closes with a historical note. Young readers will be engrossed, following this plucky but vulnerable child through a time of hardship and widespread tragedy. Illustrations not seen. (Fiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: May 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-06-029319-5
Page Count: 80
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2002
Bruchac (Sacajawea, 2000, etc.) teams up with a Lakota (Sioux) artist for an atmospheric view of the feared and revered Crazy Horse’s youth. At birth, the child dubbed “Curly” did not cry, but “studied the world with serious eyes,” quietly going on to lead all of the other youths in courage and, having watched his people being gunned down for killing a “wasichu” settler's errant cow, slipping away on a premature vision quest. His stormy vision of a rider with a lightning bolt on his cheek, spots like hail on his chest, and a clear, if unspoken, command to “keep nothing for yourself,” led him to become a man as noble as he was brilliant and daring. Inspired by the ledger-book art of the Plains Indians, Nelson paints his figures with stylized forms, chiseled features, and indistinct expressions, adding realistic depth of field but giving Crazy Horse blue skin to emphasize his connection to the spirit world. The author and illustrator both append substantial explanatory notes. Like A Boy Called Slow, also by Bruchac (1995), this makes inspirational reading and affords a glimpse into the heart of a renowned American leader. (Picture book/biography. 9-11)
Pub Date: May 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-880000-94-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Lee & Low Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2000
Here Armstrong, author of the award-winning Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World: Shackleton’s Amazing Voyage (1998) captains an oversized, picture-story version, matching an economical retelling of the ill-fated expedition’s course to a grand array of maps, journal pages, and dramatic documentary photos. This is capped by Maughan’s even more dramatic paintings as, working on canvas, the artist depicts small, exhausted-looking human figures struggling through huge, dim, utterly inhospitable Antarctic land- and seascapes. Even more than Michael McCurdy’s Trapped by the Ice! Shackleton’s Amazing Antarctic Adventure (1997), this will have young readers marveling that anyone could survive such conditions, and will leave them appreciating that even failure can be glorious. (Shackleton meant to cross the continent, but never even reached the mainland before the ice crushed his ship.) The expedition’s trek, through some of the worst weather in the world to a place where rescue could reach them, makes compelling reading at any length. (timeline, index, crew list, brief list of further resources) (Nonfiction, 9-11)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-517-80091-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
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