Suddenly abandoned around 1300 c.e., and still only about 10 percent excavated, the thousands of D-shaped Great Houses and other sites in or around New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon constitute a fertile field for archaeological investigation and speculation. Here, squired by a local researcher, veteran traveler Lourie does both, touring the rocky, sunburned area, offering awed descriptions of major sites, historical background on their modern rediscovery, accounts of current theories about Anasazi—or “Ancestral Puebloan People,” to use a less judgmental moniker (“Anasazi” means “ancestors of the enemy” in the Navajo language)—lifeways, and plenty of sharply focused color photos, to which he adds historical portraits and landscapes. The author’s enthusiasm gives this handsome travelogue an inviting immediacy; readers will come away with a clear sense of how little is known, and how much remains to be discovered, about this mysterious civilization. (index, skimpy bibliography) (Nonfiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-56397-972-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Norman (The Girl Who Dreamed Only Geese, 1997) presents seven trickster tales collected from living Algonquian storytellers, collated from multiple versions and backed up by specific source notes. That said, the scholarship is unobtrusive, and readers will have no trouble following Trickster from one pickle to the next. They may be puzzled at times—in the first story a meeting with a man/bear-hermit persuades Trickster, for some reason, to stop boasting that he’s “best at being alone”—but they’ll also laugh when Fox is bamboozled out of all but the feet of a brace of ducks, or when Trickster is tricked out in a coat of moldy fish heads in one tale, and a weasel’s tail in another. The lines of text are varied in length to evoke the cadences of live telling, and Pohrt’s human and animal figures are depicted with expressive, fine-lined realism. An inviting, inarguably authentic collection. (Folklore. 8-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-15-200888-8
Page Count: 82
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Whirls of tiny, brightly dressed people’some with wings—fill Kleven’s kaleidoscopic portraits of sun-drenched Los Angeles neighborhoods and landmarks; the Los Angeles—based authors supply equally colorful accounts of the city’s growth, festivals, and citizens, using an appended chronology to squeeze in a few more anecdotes. As does Kathy Jakobsen’s My New York (1998), Jaskol and Lewis’s book captures a vivid sense of a major urban area’s bustle, diversity, and distinctive character; young Angelenos will get a hearty dose of civic pride, and children everywhere will find new details in the vibrant illustrations at every pass. (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-10)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-525-46214-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
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