Educators may find this an instructive reminder that big pictures often don’t reveal much.
Facts about native peoples in the United States and Canada presented in infographic form make up the substance of this visually interesting but problematic title.
Organized loosely into sections covering origins, society, foods and culture, this slim volume attempts to provide a visual snapshot of the many indigenous peoples of these two countries. Each double-page spread answers a question—“Where did they live?” “How did they eat?” “What do they believe?”—with a short paragraph and one or many graphics accompanied by further text. There are maps, graphs, word clouds, timelines and numbers galore. Some images are suitable for younger readers: “What can you make with a bison?” is a clear depiction of how that animal served as a “walking department store.” Others, such as a map combining symbols and colors for typical communities, social structures and kinship systems, require considerable visual literacy. The combination of generalities—“Generosity is an important aspect of Native American spirituality”—and statistics that vary from source to source makes the information that is so graphically presented suspect. A selected bibliography suggests the actor-turned-author consulted sources ranging from encyclopedias to websites from a variety of organizations. Occasional obvious errors (humans don’t walk at 10 mph) stand out.
Educators may find this an instructive reminder that big pictures often don’t reveal much. (index) (Nonfiction. 8-12)Pub Date: July 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-55451-485-4
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
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
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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