A child’s experience on a whaling ship in 1851 is brought to life in this fictional account based on two real whaling families’ journals and diaries. Nine-year-old Laura and her younger brother William sail with their mother and sea-captain father on an expedition to the Arctic whaling grounds. They won’t return for seven months or until the ship is filled with 2,600 barrels of whale oil. Laura writes in her diary each day, sharing with readers the routines of eating, sleeping, and learning, as well as the adventures and the hardships of living on a small whaling ship. Excitement mounts as the ship enters arctic waters. Whales are hunted and processed. When unseasonably cold weather sets, the boat is caught in the ice and the captain is forced to abandon ship before reaching his goal. Laura and family travel in a longboat until they are rescued at sea, and there, Laura ends her diary. Allen’s (Good-Bye, Charles Lindbergh, 1998, etc.) sepia ink sketches set alongside the text illustrate many objects that may be unfamiliar to the modern reader. These include a chamber pot, sailor’s knots, and a harpoon. Two-page color pencil-and-oil wash illustrations interspersed with the text give the larger context of the whaling scene. These luminous images sharpen the reader’s understanding of a bygone life. Additional information and historical background are included in an authors’ note, and a glossary is placed at the front of the book for easy reference. A good read with an interesting historical background. (Fiction. 8-10)
Pub Date: May 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-689-82222-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000
Rockliff and Bruno’s playful approach buoys solid science and history.
Ben Franklin’s several years in France during the American Revolution included an occasion on which he consulted on a scientific matter for the French king.
Louis XVI commissioned a study when he became concerned about the number of complaints he was hearing from French doctors about a German—Dr. Franz Mesmer—who seemed to wield a powerful, mysterious method of healing. Among the scientists and doctors asked to report was the American emissary Benjamin Franklin. In Rockliff’s account, Franklin observes Mesmer’s colleague, Charles D’Eslon, at work, then tinkers with Mesmer’s “animal magnetism” technique by blindfolding and misdirecting D’Eslon’s subjects. Franklin’s hypothesis—that results were accounted for by the subject’s imagination and not an external force—is quickly proved. Text displayed in ribbons, a couple of late-18th-century typefaces and other flourishes create a sense of time and place. The endpapers are brightly hypnotic. Bruno’s digitally colored pencil art lightly evokes period caricature and gently pokes fun at the ornate clothing and hair of French nobility. The tale is nicely pitched to emphasize the importance of a hypothesis, testing and verification, and several inset text boxes are used to explain these scientific tools. Rockliff points out that Franklin’s blind-test technique is in use today for medical treatments, and both the placebo effect and hypnosis are studied today.
Rockliff and Bruno’s playful approach buoys solid science and history. (author’s note, sources) (Nonfiction. 8-10)Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6351-3
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
A different take on a difficult subject.
A young Jewish girl and her family must flee when the Nazis march into Paris.
Before the Nazis came, life was good. But when the “bad men came / in their brown shirts, guns in hands,” everything changed. All Jews must wear yellow stars, Papa can no longer work, the family is forced from their home, and they are cursed in the streets. They leave the city to live in the woods, enduring hunger, cold and fear of capture. They embark on a long, arduous journey over the mountains to Spain and then across to England and loving relatives. The little girl is aware of the dangers and her parents’ courage, and she remains steadfastly sure that a guardian angel is watching over them. When they return to Paris at the end of the war, there is a beautiful, monumental angel, surely the very one who had kept them safe, holding up the roof of their new apartment building. The girl narrates in an oddly dispassionate free-verse voice, so sure is she of the happy outcome for her family. Though an author’s note provides additional information about the war and the Holocaust and the staggering number of deaths, it will be difficult for young readers to make the connection between the narrator’s experience and the grim reality of the millions who perished. Green’s mixed-media illustrations are appropriately dark and menacing.
A different take on a difficult subject. (Picture book. 8-10)Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-399-16741-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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