By the author of a fine Alcott biography (Louisa May [1991]), a perceptive portrait. Like Suzanne M. Coil (Harriet Beecher Stowe [1993]), Johnston has done her research thoroughly and offers a detailed, balanced account. Johnston's narrative skills, honed in over 60 YA novels, give her an edge; her depiction of Harriet's happy marriage to the scholarly but impractical Calvin Stowe is more credible than Coil's (``despite his hypochondria, his inability to cope with crises or to earn much money,'' Calvin ``had faith in her even when she did not herself [and] admired her mind''); her pivotal passages on the actual writing of Uncle Tom's Cabin are especially dramatic, while the final scenes of the aged widow wandering next door to pluck Sam Clemens's flowers, roots and all, have a touching authenticity. She also does a fine job of setting context and of showing how Harriet's Calvinist roots—particularly as manifested in the powerful Beecher clan—and other influences, radical and traditional, played roles in the development of her ideas and writing. Harriet continues to fascinate as a woman of—and also, in many ways, ahead of—her time, who did whatever she undertook with enormous competence and persistence. A dour jacket portrait does its subject scant justice. Archival photos, etc.; further reading (annotated); index (not seen). (Biography. 11+)
Pub Date: May 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-02-747714-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Four Winds/MacMillan
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Ringgold’s biography of Rosa Parks packs substantial material into a few pages, but with a light touch, and with the ring of authenticity that gives her act of weary resistance all the respect it deserves. Narrating the book is the bus that Parks took that morning 45 years ago; it recounts the signal events in Parks’s life to a young girl who boarded it to go to school. A decent amount of the material will probably be new to children, for Parks is so intimately associated with the Montgomery Bus Boycott that her work with the NAACP before the bus incident is often overlooked, as is her later role as a community activist in Detroit with Congressman John Conyers. Ringgold, through the bus, also informs readers of Parks’s youth in rural Alabama, where Klansmen and nightriders struck fear into the lives of African-Americans. These experiences make her refusal to release her seat all the more courageous, for the consequences of resistance were not gentle. All the events are depicted in emotive naive artwork that underscores their truth; Ringgold delivers Parks’s story without hyperbole, but rather as a life lived with pride, conviction, and consequence. (Picture book/biography. 5-9)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-689-81892-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Wheeler offers a scrapbook-style travelogue of her seven-month stint on the world’s coldest continent. Letters to her...
In an eye-opening companion to such works as Jennifer Armstrong’s Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World (1999) and Elizabeth Cody Kimmel’s Ice Story (p. 66) on Shackleton, readers get a contemporary look at Antarctica.
Wheeler offers a scrapbook-style travelogue of her seven-month stint on the world’s coldest continent. Letters to her godson, Daniel, describe a harsh environment so cold that dental fillings fall out. Double-page spreads dotted with full-color snapshots form short chapters on the icy region, suiting up, the difficulties of everyday existence, food and drink, shelter, transportation, entertainment, and wildlife. The last third of the volume is devoted to current scientific pursuits as well as an overview of famous expeditions to the nearly uninhabitable “bottom of the planet.” The cheery photographs – most by the author – show her dwarfed by the Barne glacier, posing with Emperor penguins, even building an igloo. While the chatty letters highlight personal details of the trip, boxed inserts provide background information. Key dates in Antarctic history complete this accessible profile, ideal as entry into units on the region. (maps, charts, diagrams, further reading, index) (Nonfiction. 8-12)Pub Date: July 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-87226-295-2
Page Count: 44
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1999
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