A bracing work of historical fiction makes an unfriendly place of the Ohio riverfront as three children fight for their lives. In May 1793 the motherless Dunn family—Papa, Amos, Clara, and Jonathan—have almost completed their long trek from eastern Pennsylvania to the place where they hope to make a new life, the Ohio frontier. Amos, 13, is particularly anxious to start over; his memory of a terrible event and his subsequent guilt can be assuaged only in a new place. When the riverboat that is to carry the family to Marietta is ambushed by Indians, a terrible battle ensues, and in the confusion, the boat goes adrift, carrying the Dunn children down river. A second Indian attack causes them to abandon the boat and they land on the north shore of the Ohio River. Their only course is to walk to Marietta, following the river. Along the way, Amos spots a boy clinging to a floating log, and rescues him. He is an Indian boy, barely alive from a gunshot wound, and the children start to nurse him back to health. Still ahead for them: They are taken prisoner by a band of Shawnee, and need to reach Marietta, hoping to see their father again. Willis (Out of the Storm, 1995, etc.) has created a rousing adventure; it will have readers turning the pages and rooting for the spunky Dunn kids all the way. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: March 17, 1997
ISBN: 0-395-77044-0
Page Count: 183
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1997
Categories: CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION
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The author of the Anastasia books as well as more serious fiction (Rabble Starkey, 1987) offers her first historical fiction—a story about the escape of the Jews from Denmark in 1943.
Five years younger than Lisa in Carol Matas' Lisa's War (1989), Annemarie Johansen has, at 10, known three years of Nazi occupation. Though ever cautious and fearful of the ubiquitous soldiers, she is largely unaware of the extent of the danger around her; the Resistance kept even its participants safer by telling them as little as possible, and Annemarie has never been told that her older sister Lise died in its service. When the Germans plan to round up the Jews, the Johansens take in Annemarie's friend, Ellen Rosen, and pretend she is their daughter; later, they travel to Uncle Hendrik's house on the coast, where the Rosens and other Jews are transported by fishing boat to Sweden. Apart from Lise's offstage death, there is little violence here; like Annemarie, the reader is protected from the full implications of events—but will be caught up in the suspense and menace of several encounters with soldiers and in Annemarie's courageous run as courier on the night of the escape. The book concludes with the Jews' return, after the war, to homes well kept for them by their neighbors.
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit of riding alone in Copenhagen, but for their Jews. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: April 1, 1989
ISBN: 0547577095
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1989
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION
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The closing of her favorite swimming pool opens 11-year-old Gloriana Hemphill’s eyes to the ugliness of racism in a small Mississippi town in 1964.
Glory can’t believe it… the Hanging Moss Community Pool is closing right before her July Fourth birthday. Not only that, she finds out the closure’s not for the claimed repairs needed, but so Negroes can’t swim there. Tensions have been building since “Freedom Workers” from the North started shaking up status quo, and Glory finds herself embroiled in it when her new, white friend from Ohio boldly drinks from the “Colored Only” fountain. The Hemphills’ African-American maid, Emma, a mother figure to Glory and her sister Jesslyn, tells her, “Don’t be worrying about what you can’t fix, Glory honey.” But Glory does, becoming an activist herself when she writes an indignant letter to the newspaper likening “hateful prejudice” to “dog doo” that makes her preacher papa proud. When she’s not saving the world, reading Nancy Drew or eating Dreamsicles, Glory shares the heartache of being the kid sister of a preoccupied teenager, friendship gone awry and the terrible cost of blabbing people’s secrets… mostly in a humorously sassy first-person voice.
Though occasionally heavy-handed, this debut offers a vivid glimpse of the 1960s South through the eyes of a spirited girl who takes a stand. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-33180-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
Categories: CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION
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