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WAR AND THE PITY OF WAR

Name: WAR AND THE PITY OF WAR
Author: Neil Philip
ISBN: 0-395-84982-9

edited by Neil Philip & illustrated by Michael McCurdy ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 21, 1998

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This startling and honest presentation of the horrors of war from Philip and McCurdy (American Fairy Tales, 1996, etc.) uses poems to thoughtfully balance the often romanticized vision of battle as an expression of bravery and honor. Terror, agony, mass slaughter, absurdity, pointlessness, and cruelty are the subjects of poets writing from ancient times to the present; there are also elegies for warriors, celebrating their brave deaths. Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman, and Stephen Crane share pages with Anakreon and Simonides; there are contributors from Beirut and Bosnia, as well as from the death trains of WWII. Among McCurdy’s somber and realistic black-and-white illustrations are dead soldiers hanging on barbed wire, and a lone soldier standing in a graveyard, holding his head as he says goodbye to those who have died on the fields. The book makes vivid humankind’s innate darkness and makes war painful again. (indexes) (Poetry. 10-14)

Pub Date: Sept. 21, 1998

ISBN: 0-395-84982-9

Page Count: 96

Publisher: Clarion Books

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1998

Categories:

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT HISTORY | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
HOT POTATO
edited by Neil Philip & illustrated by Claire Henley

- BOOK REVIEW
HORSE HOOVES AND CHICKEN FEET
adapted by Neil Philip & illustrated by Jacqueline Mair

- BOOK REVIEW
IN THE HOUSE OF HAPPINESS
edited by Neil Philip & illustrated by Isabelle Brent

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UNDER A RED SKY

MEMOIR OF A CHILDHOOD IN COMMUNIST ROMANIA

by Haya Leah Molner ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2010

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In this rich, insightful memoir, Molnar offers a child’s-eye view of life in Romania in the late 1950s. Known as Eva Zimmerman then, she lived in a crowded but loving Bucharest home that included her parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. They are a lively, eccentric bunch brought vividly to life in a simple first-person, present-tense narration. Especially endearing is Eva’s relationship with her grandfather, who encourages her to embrace her Jewish heritage. Her cinematographer father, a survivor of several concentration camps who lost his parents to the Holocaust, is haunted by his experiences. Eva learns from her grandmother the complicity of Romania’s World War II fascist regime in the murder of thousands of Jews. With anti-Semitism still pervasive in Communist Romania, Eva keeps her Jewish identity secret from classmates when she begins school. The author vividly depicts the harsh realities of life under fascist rule: scarcity of food and housing, ideological indoctrination in school and constant fear of the Securitate, the secret police who are always watching and listening. Black-and-white family photographs illustrate this poignant, memorable memoir. (Memoir. 10-14)

Pub Date: April 1, 2010

ISBN: 978-0-374-31840-6

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Frances Foster/Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2010

Categories:

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT NONFICTION | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

SAGE OF THE SUPREME COURT

by G. Edward White ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 1999

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This entry in the Oxford Portraits series is both very good and very useful. White presents a clear biography of the Supreme Court justice who served in the Civil War, studied law, and lived long in the shadow of his famous writer father of the same name. By the time he came to the Supreme Court, he was already 60 years old, but served for three decades more. White creates a vivid portrait of this scholarly and philosophical legal thinker while including rich details of his intellectual but reserved home life and his affectionate flirtations with many women. More than that, readers will absorb a history of the development of legal education, the growth of the Supreme Court, and how law unfolds as a study and a discipline. White is especially felicitous in explaining how the elegance of Holmes’s prose occasionally obscured the legal point he was making. Quotations from Holmes’s writing and picture captions with further details add to the story, and not the least of its accomplishments is to show a man who began the greatest of his career challenges when he was already perceived of as old. Excellent. (chronology, further reading, index) (Biography. 10-12)