An uninspired, unnecessary, superficial treatment of a critically important subject.
Arresting visuals are the distinguishing feature of this introduction to the Holocaust for middle graders.
Divided into three sections, Steele’s capsulized chronicle begins by putting the Holocaust in historical context with information about centuries-old anti-Semitic sentiment in Europe, its co-option by Hitler and the Nazis in post–World War I Germany, and the systematic persecution of Jews with their rise. The second section covers deportations, concentration camps, the Final Solution, and acts of resistance by both Jews and Righteous Gentiles. Steele notes that Jews were not the only victims. The third section covers the liberation of the camps, displaced persons, the Nuremberg trials, and the founding of Israel. The abundant use of photographs is often visually striking, but the flat, dull, textbooklike writing is presented in clumps of text void of nuance, finesse, or narrative cohesion, resulting in a sadly simplistic treatment of a hugely complex subject. Minimal use is made of quotations from perpetrators, survivors, and liberators. There are no source notes, bibliography, suggestions for further reading, or even a list of websites listed in the end matter. Numerous books are already available on the Holocaust, offering a far more compelling and insightful overview of the subject.
An uninspired, unnecessary, superficial treatment of a critically important subject. (photos, maps, glossary, photo credits, index) (Nonfiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-338-03040-2
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Bial (A Handful of Dirt, p. 299, etc.) conjures up ghostly images of the Wild West with atmospheric photos of weathered clapboard and a tally of evocative names: Tombstone, Deadwood, Goldfield, Progress, Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickock, the OK Corral. Tracing the life cycle of the estimated 30,000 ghost towns (nearly 1300 in Utah alone), he captures some echo of their bustling, rough-and-tumble past with passages from contemporary observers like Mark Twain: “If a man wanted a fight on his hands without any annoying delay, all he had to do was appear in public in a white shirt or stove-pipe hat, and he would be accommodated.” Among shots of run-down mining works, dusty, deserted streets, and dark eaves silhouetted against evening skies, Bial intersperses 19th-century photos and prints for contrast, plus an occasional portrait of a grizzled modern resident. He suggests another sort of resident too: “At night that plaintive hoo-hoo may be an owl nesting in a nearby saguaro cactus—or the moaning of a restless ghost up in the graveyard.” Children seeking a sense of this partly mythic time and place in American history, or just a delicious shiver, will linger over his tribute. (bibliography) (Nonfiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-618-06557-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2001
In this companion to Portraits of War: Civil War Photographers and Their Work (1998), Sullivan presents an album of the prominent ships and men who fought on both sides, matched to an engrossing account of the war's progress: at sea, on the Mississippi, and along the South's well-defended coastline. In his view, the issue never was in doubt, for though the Confederacy fought back with innovative ironclads, sleek blockade runners, well-armed commerce raiders, and sturdy fortifications, from the earliest stages the North was able to seal off, and then take, one major southern port after another. The photos, many of which were made from fragile glass plates whose survival seems near-miraculous, are drawn from private as well as public collections, and some have never been published before. There aren't any action shots, since mid-19th-century photography required very long exposure times, but the author compensates with contemporary prints, plus crisp battle accounts, lucid strategic overviews, and descriptions of the technological developments that, by war's end, gave this country a world-class navy. He also profiles the careers of Matthew Brady and several less well-known photographers, adding another level of interest to a multi-stranded survey. (source notes, index) (Nonfiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7613-1553-5
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Twenty-First Century/Millbrook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001
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