Any account of this Scottish navigator’s adventurous career would make absorbing reading; Kraske adds unusual dimension by enlarging on the historical record with credible insights into his character as well. Sent off alone, with minimal supplies, to an uninhabited island far from the Chilean coast after a clash with his ship’s captain, Selkirk learned survival skills through trial and error as he slowly adapted to the total lack of human company. Rescued more than four years later, he went on to become a successful privateer, and even a celebrity. However, too changed by his long isolation to fit back into human society, he ultimately enlisted in the Royal Navy, and died at 41 of a tropical disease. Kraske concludes with sketches of Daniel Defoe’s tumultuous life and the genesis of Robinson Crusoe, plus a visit to Selkirk’s island today and a research note. Enhanced by a map and by Parker’s offhand, full-page portraits at the chapter heads, it all makes a grand, poignant tale. (bibliography) (Biography. 10-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-56843-3
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2005
Kostyal has written a tight, bracing biography of the renowned Antarctic explorer, illustrated with dramatic black-and-white photographs. Shackleton, a man whose sense of romance and adventure repeatedly drew him from conventional British society to Antarctica (“that lonely, windswept desert of ice and snow at the bottom of the world”), succeeded neither in reaching the South Pole nor traversing the continent, but he exhibited such remarkable valor that, according to the author, his name has become “synonymous with bravery and endurance.” As usual, there is more about his expeditions than the man, but Kostyal renders the tale in vivid prose that is enhanced by maps, quotes, a timeline and some remarkable photographs. This quality book will be a useful addition in both home and school libraries. (map, chronology, index) (Biography. 8-10)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-7922-7393-1
Page Count: 64
Publisher: National Geographic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1999
Yannuzzi (Wilma Mankiller, 1994, not reviewed), awkwardly rehashing information better handled by one of her sources—Mary Lyons's Sorrow's Kitchen (1993)—seldom peeks below the surface of Hurston's checkered literary career and notably unstable private life. A luminary of the Harlem Renaissance, Hurston later became an enthusiastic collector of African-American tales, lore, and cultural practices—but, unable to hold on to money, friends, husbands, or benefactors, died in poverty and remained almost forgotten until the mid-1970s. Through a selection of telling incidents and brief quoted comments, Hurston's intelligence and strong personality come across, but her written work is passed over virtually unassessed in a dry recitation of titles and content summaries that reads like CIP notes. Yannuzzi does not explain how an author supposedly endowed with ``a big talent and a strong will to succeed'' met with such mixed reviews and produced so many rejected manuscripts; readers will come away with only vague ideas of the quality of Hurston's thought or writing. This may be more detailed than Patricia McKissack's shorter Zora Neale Hurston, Writer and Storyteller (1992), but it offers no further insight. (b&w photos, chronology, notes, bibliography, glossary, index) (Biography. 10-12)
Pub Date: April 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-89490-685-2
Page Count: 104
Publisher: Enslow
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1996
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