by Sharlee Glenn ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 10, 2018
An ennobling portrait of a pioneer who took the library out of its walls and to the public.
Anyone who has enjoyed the services of a bookmobile can thank a dedicated, visionary librarian named Mary Lemist Titcomb.
With career opportunities limited for women in 19th-century America, Titcomb chose the emerging new field of librarianship. After an apprenticeship, Titcomb was hired by the Rutland Free Library in Vermont, where she quickly moved up to chief librarian. A significant career disappointment was Melvil Dewey’s rejection of her application to serve in the Woman’s Building library at the Chicago World’s Fair; Dewey acknowledged Titcomb’s admirable work in Vermont but said she had not done enough to make herself known beyond. That slap inspired Titcomb to work tirelessly to make a name for herself and a difference in her profession. Titcomb’s greatest contribution to library services came as head of the Washington County Free Library in Hagerstown, Maryland. Determined to make the library accessible to the county’s rural residents, the most revolutionary of her innovations was a horse-drawn book wagon. A horseless carriage later succeeded it. Book wagons soon appeared in other parts of the country, and by 1922, the bookmobile was born. Titcomb’s complete dedication to her work and determination to succeed is inspiring, and the peek into her climb up the career ladder is revelatory beyond its look at the history of librarianship. Attractively designed to resemble a scrapbook, the engaging narrative is complemented with archival photographs, reproductions of correspondence, and other artifacts.
An ennobling portrait of a pioneer who took the library out of its walls and to the public. (source notes, bibliography) (Biography. 8-12)Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4197-2875-4
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
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by Chris Newell ; illustrated by Winona Nelson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 2, 2021
Essential.
A measured corrective to pervasive myths about what is often referred to as the “first Thanksgiving.”
Contextualizing them within a Native perspective, Newell (Passamaquoddy) touches on the all-too-familiar elements of the U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving and its origins and the history of English colonization in the territory now known as New England. In addition to the voyage and landfall of the Mayflower, readers learn about the Doctrine of Discovery that arrogated the lands of non-Christian peoples to European settlers; earlier encounters between the Indigenous peoples of the region and Europeans; and the Great Dying of 1616-1619, which emptied the village of Patuxet by 1620. Short, two- to six-page chapters alternate between the story of the English settlers and exploring the complex political makeup of the region and the culture, agriculture, and technology of the Wampanoag—all before covering the evolution of the holiday. Refreshingly, the lens Newell offers is a Native one, describing how the Wampanoag and other Native peoples received the English rather than the other way around. Key words ranging from estuary to discover are printed in boldface in the narrative and defined in a closing glossary. Nelson (a member of the Leech Lake Band of Minnesota Chippewa) contributes soft line-and-color illustrations of the proceedings. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Essential. (Nonfiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-72637-4
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Scholastic Nonfiction
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
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by Jonah Winter ; illustrated by Jeanette Winter ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 31, 2020
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care.
In 1977, the oil carrier Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil into a formerly pristine Alaskan ocean inlet, killing millions of birds, animals, and fish. Despite a cleanup, crude oil is still there.
The Winters foretold the destructive powers of the atomic bomb allusively in The Secret Project (2017), leaving the actuality to the backmatter. They make no such accommodations to young audiences in this disturbing book. From the dark front cover, on which oily blobs conceal a seabird, to the rescuer’s sad face on the back, the mother-son team emphasizes the disaster. A relatively easy-to-read and poetically heightened text introduces the situation. Oil is pumped from the Earth “all day long, all night long, / day after day, year after year” in “what had been unspoiled land, home to Native people // and thousands of caribou.” The scale of extraction is huge: There’s “a giant pipeline” leading to “enormous ships.” Then, crash. Rivers of oil gush out over three full-bleed wordless pages. Subsequent scenes show rocks, seabirds, and sea otters covered with oil. Finally, 30 years later, animals have returned to a cheerful scene. “But if you lift a rock… // oil / seeps / up.” For an adult reader, this is heartbreaking. How much more difficult might this be for an animal-loving child?
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care. (author’s note, further reading) (Informational picture book. 9-12)Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3077-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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