Brief introductions to Christian men from around the globe who had an impact on the world around them.
Well-known athletes, authors, scientists, missionaries, and more are highlighted alongside lesser-known Christian men in this collective biography. White American football player Tim Tebow is known for kneeling and praying at games. Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara signed exit visas for Jewish refugees in Lithuania to escape the Holocaust. Figures profiled hail from a variety of ethnicities, nationalities, occupations, backgrounds, and time periods, dating back to 1181 with St. Francis. The 50 men are each depicted on a full spread, with a short biography on verso and a one-page full-color illustration on recto. The minibiographies give a glimpse into each man’s childhood, hardships he may have encountered, and how he came to be recognized and celebrated. While some men are known worldwide for their contributions, many of these stories bring to the fore men who were mostly active within the Christian community, such as missionaries and evangelists. When focusing on non-White converts, like Cherokee missionary and jurist Jesse Bushyhead, the text emphasizes cultural assimilation. The brief text is a double-edged sword, giving enough to get readers interested but sometimes causing confusion, as with its bland acceptance of Edward Jenner’s testing his smallpox vaccine on his gardener’s 8-year-old son.
A mostly fine collection of short biographies for Christian readers. (notes) (Collective biography. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7369-8133-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Harvest House
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
Categories: CHILDREN'S RELIGION | CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
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To Esther Rudomin at eleven Siberia meant the metaphor: isolation, criminals and cruel punishment, snow and wolves; but even in Siberia there is satisfaction from making a friend of a prickly classmate, from seeing a Deanna Durbin movie four times, from earning and studying and eventually belonging.
Especially in Siberia, where not wolves but hunger and dirt and cold are endemic, where shabbiness and overcrowding are taken for granted, where unselfishness is exceptional. At the heart of Mrs. Hautzig's memoir of four years as a Polish deportee in Russia during World War II is not only hardihood and adaptability but uniquely a girl like any other. Abruptly seized in their comfortable home in Vilna, Esther and her family, are shipped in cattle cars to Rubtsovsk in the Altai Territory, work as slave laborers in a gypsum mine until amnesty, then are "permitted" lobs and lodging in the village--if someone will take them in. After sleeping on the floor, a wooden platform is very welcome; after sharing a room with two other families, a separate dung hut seems a homestead. Then Esther goes to school, the greatest boon, and, to her mother's horror, wants to be like the Siberians....Deprivation does not make Esther grim: the saddest day of her life is her father's departure for a labor brigade at the front, her sharpest bitterness is for the bland viciousness of individuals.
Involving from "the end of my lovely world" to the end of exile (when the Rudomins, as Jews, were jeered in Poland), this is a beautiful book with no bar to wide acceptance (and a rich non-juvenile jacket by Nonny Hogrogian). (Memoir. 8-12)Pub Date: April 15, 1968
ISBN: 978-0-06-447027-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: T.Y. Crowell
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1968
Categories: CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
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Renowned achievers go nose-to-nose on fold-out pages.
Mixing contemporary celebrities with historical figures, Corbineau pairs off his gallery of full-page portraits by theme, the images all reworked from photos or prints into cut-paper collages with highly saturated hues. Gandhi and Rosa Parks exemplify nonviolent protest; Mother Teresa and Angelina Jolie are (mostly) commended for their work with impoverished people; and a “common point” between Gutenberg and Mark Zuckerberg is that both revolutionized the ways we communicate. The portraits, on opposite ends of gatefolds, open to reveal short biographies flanking explanatory essays. Women and people of color are distinctly underrepresented. There are a few surprises, such as guillotined French playwright Olympe de Gouges, linked for her feminism with actress Emma Watson; extreme free-fall jumper Felix Baumgartner, paired with fellow aerialist record-seeker Amelia Earhart; and Nelson Mandela’s co–freedom fighter Jean Moulin, a leader of the French Resistance. In another departure from the usual run of inspirational panegyrics, Cornabas slips in the occasional provocative claim, noting that many countries considered Mandela’s African National Congress a terrorist organization and that Mother Teresa, believing that suffering was “a gift from God,” rarely gave her patients painkillers. Although perhaps only some of these subjects “changed the world” in any significant sense, all come off as admirable—for their ambition, strength of character, and drive.
Several unexpected connections, though Eurocentric overall and lacking in racial diversity. (map, timeline) (Collective biography. 8-11)Pub Date: Nov. 28, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7643-6226-2
Page Count: 84
Publisher: Schiffer
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
Categories: CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CHILDREN'S HISTORY
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