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WOUNDED KNEE

Waldman’s (The Wisdom Bird, 2000, etc.) account of the massacre at Wounded Knee is accessible to young readers, but troubling in its lack of documentation. His short narrative moves quickly through the background of the Overland Trail and the Indian “treaties,” boarding schools and the Ghost Dance religion, to the events that lead to the historic slaughter. He describes how the settlers and the government quickly decimated the Lakota’s culture (acknowledging, for instance, the systematic slaughter of the buffalo), and portrays the events at Wounded Knee as a massacre, rather than the “battle” it has been called. He makes good use of newspaper headlines and articles to convey the sentiments of the white culture at the time, but he also makes use of dialogue and dramatic setting that is unattributed (“the braves glanced nervously at one another, sensing that a bloody confrontation loomed just ahead”). At the front and end, there’s a present-tense description of the battle from Black Elk’s point of view. Also unattributed, it is a loose paraphrase from Black Elk Speaks (which Waldman does include in his bibliography), including some phrases in direct quotes, but with some curious alterations. For instance, “I painted my face all red . . . It did not take me long to get ready” (from Black Elk Speaks) becomes “He hurriedly painted his face red” (in Waldman’s text). Though Black Elk Speaks indicates “when we were charging, I just held the sacred bow out in front of me with my right hand. The bullets did not hit us at all,” Waldman says, “The riders held their bows high above their heads and charged down from the ridge, directly into the fire of the cavalry.” Combined with his impressionistic paintings, most of which are based on photographs by Edward S. Curtis and contemporaries, Waldman portrays the Lakota sympathetically, but with a romanticized tone that is inaccurate. The bibliography of six adult titles will be only moderately useful to young readers, who will need more resources to flesh out their understanding of Lakota culture and this period of history. However, there is little else available on Wounded Knee, and for careful readers, this might be a useful place to start. (bibliography, photo credits, index) (Nonfiction. 9-13)

Pub Date: May 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-689-82559-5

Page Count: 64

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001

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A YEAR DOWN YONDER

From the Grandma Dowdel series , Vol. 2

Year-round fun.

Set in 1937 during the so-called “Roosevelt recession,” tight times compel Mary Alice, a Chicago girl, to move in with her grandmother, who lives in a tiny Illinois town so behind the times that it doesn’t “even have a picture show.”

This winning sequel takes place several years after A Long Way From Chicago (1998) leaves off, once again introducing the reader to Mary Alice, now 15, and her Grandma Dowdel, an indomitable, idiosyncratic woman who despite her hard-as-nails exterior is able to see her granddaughter with “eyes in the back of her heart.” Peck’s slice-of-life novel doesn’t have much in the way of a sustained plot; it could almost be a series of short stories strung together, but the narrative never flags, and the book, populated with distinctive, soulful characters who run the gamut from crazy to conventional, holds the reader’s interest throughout. And the vignettes, some involving a persnickety Grandma acting nasty while accomplishing a kindness, others in which she deflates an overblown ego or deals with a petty rivalry, are original and wildly funny. The arena may be a small hick town, but the battle for domination over that tiny turf is fierce, and Grandma Dowdel is a canny player for whom losing isn’t an option. The first-person narration is infused with rich, colorful language—“She was skinnier than a toothpick with termites”—and Mary Alice’s shrewd, prickly observations: “Anybody who thinks small towns are friendlier than big cities lives in a big city.”

Year-round fun. (Fiction. 11-13)

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000

ISBN: 978-0-8037-2518-8

Page Count: 144

Publisher: Dial Books

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2000

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A WEEK IN THE WOODS

Playing on his customary theme that children have more on the ball than adults give them credit for, Clements (Big Al and Shrimpy, p. 951, etc.) pairs a smart, unhappy, rich kid and a small-town teacher too quick to judge on appearances. Knowing that he’ll only be finishing up the term at the local public school near his new country home before hieing off to an exclusive academy, Mark makes no special effort to fit in, just sitting in class and staring moodily out the window. This rubs veteran science teacher Bill Maxwell the wrong way, big time, so that even after Mark realizes that he’s being a snot and tries to make amends, all he gets from Mr. Maxwell is the cold shoulder. Matters come to a head during a long-anticipated class camping trip; after Maxwell catches Mark with a forbidden knife (a camp mate’s, as it turns out) and lowers the boom, Mark storms off into the woods. Unaware that Mark is a well-prepared, enthusiastic (if inexperienced) hiker, Maxwell follows carelessly, sure that the “slacker” will be waiting for rescue around the next bend—and breaks his ankle running down a slope. Reconciliation ensues once he hobbles painfully into Mark’s neatly organized camp, and the two make their way back together. This might have some appeal to fans of Gary Paulsen’s or Will Hobbs’s more catastrophic survival tales, but because Clements pauses to explain—at length—everyone’s history, motives, feelings, and mindset, it reads more like a scenario (albeit an empowering one, at least for children) than a story. Worthy—but just as Maxwell underestimates his new student, so too does Clement underestimate his readers’ ability to figure out for themselves what’s going on in each character’s life and head. (Fiction. 10-12)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002

ISBN: 0-689-82596-X

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002

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