Three pop-up tableaux—of bridge, castle and cathedral—enliven this exploration of life in 1325, which takes the fortunes of one Hugo from page to knight as its loose focus. Each spread presents one theme—“Becoming a Knight”; “Country Life”; “Crafts and Trades”—with fact boxes on such subtopics as sheep-shearing, rats and the plague and the ever-popular hygiene. The three money openings present narrow but impressive edifices leaping from the gutters; a “key” on the side invites readers to identify details within. Unfortunately, with the exception of the castle’s lift-the-flap walls, the tightness of the design makes it difficult to peer into these pop-ups. Nevertheless, good fun for budding medievalists. (index) (Pop-up/nonfiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4169-6124-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
What lure could cause thousands of people to quit their jobs, leave their families, sleep in tents, move to the wilderness, and eat wormy bread? This is a detailed, exciting account of how the discovery of gold in the streams of California in 1848 created an international frenzy to head to the American West. Schanzer (How We Crossed the West, 1997) uses direct quotes from journals, letters, and accounts written by the forty-niners themselves, giving her book an immediacy and drama others on the subject lack. She chronicles the influx of people lured by tales of wealth as they traveled across the US. The quotations create a colorful picture of the pan-handling life: what miners ate and wore, how they lived, played, struggled to survive, and how many of the people who truly profited from the gold rush were those who sold goods to the miners. Schanzer’s illustrations are dynamic, and as well-researched as the text. (map) (Nonfiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-7922-7303-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: National Geographic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PLB 0-06-027821-8 For Aliki (Marianthe’s Story, 1998, etc.), the story of the Globe Theatre is a tale of two men: Shakespeare, who made it famous, and Sam Wanamaker, the driving force behind its modern rebuilding. Decorating margins with verbal and floral garlands, Aliki creates a cascade of landscapes, crowd scenes, diminutive portraits, and sequential views, all done with her trademark warmth and delicacy of line, allowing viewers to glimpse Elizabethan life and theater, historical sites that still stand, and the raising of the new Globe near the ashes of the old. She finishes with a play list, and a generous helping of Shakespearean coinages. Though the level of information doesn’t reach that of Diane Stanley’s Bard of Avon (1992), this makes a serviceable introduction to Shakespeare’s times while creating a link between those times and the present; further tempt young readers for whom the play’s the thing with Marcia Williams’s Tales From Shakespeare (1998). (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-10)
Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-027820-X
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
