A bit of a slog for the target audience.
A story highlighting elements of Denmark’s role in the Second World War, with an inspiring young hero at its center.
Denmark is one of the few countries with a World War II record to be proud of—according to the book, 7,742 of the country’s 8,250 Jews survived with the brave assistance of non-Jewish citizens—so Hood’s choice to focus on the rare uplifting story from this period is a sound one. Twenty-two-year-old Henny Sinding, the daughter of a naval officer, helped smuggle hundreds of Jews to safety in Sweden on the Gerda III, a boat that was originally used to maintain buoys and lighthouses. Hood tells us that “people later compared Henny to / Pippi Longstocking, / the playful, / unconventional, / compassionate, / ‘strongest girl in the world,’ ” and also that “like the Little Mermaid, / Henny discovered / that being human can be painful.” But these intriguing insights are not centered, rather smothered by hundreds of pages that slowly unfold, tracing the Danish role in the war and sometimes reading like children’s encyclopedia entries with line breaks. And if the line breaks are intended to help reluctant readers by putting fewer words on each page, the vocabulary and sentence construction used often work against accessibility and comprehension. The book is very long, and it is neither lively nor lyrical.
A bit of a slog for the target audience. (author’s note, who’s who, map, historical notes, photographs, poetry notes, sources, bibliography) (Verse nonfiction. 10-14)Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-06-321448-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
This useful but uneven volume summarizes the legend of the Trojan War, then describes the archaeological excavations at Hisarlik, the Turkish site believed to have been Troy. After a brief (though ponderous) introduction comes a graceful 20-page retelling of how, according to Homer, the Greeks fought at Troy. Elegant red-and-black illustrations every few pages echo Greek vases, part of the overall attractive book design. Readers must then switch gears for the final 35 pages, illustrated with a handful of photographs, which describe the main excavations, from Heinrich Schliemann in 1870 through several more scientific expeditions up to recent times. The authors, a writer and a classical scholar, review hypotheses about the site and occasionally weave in anecdotes, but the overall scheme is chronological and the writing straightforward, without the spark of Laura Amy Schlitz’s biography, The Hero Schliemann (2006). However, readers may find the recap of The Iliad enjoyable and the rest, including a timeline and recommended websites, helpful for reports. Given the source material, it should be better. (bibliography, source notes, index) (Nonfiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-58089-326-8
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Awash in mighty squalls, tales of heroism and melodramatic chapter headings like “The Lady Elgin: Death in the Darkness,” these marine yarns recount the violent ends of nine of the more than 6,000 ships that have “left the bottoms of Lakes Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan, and Superior…littered with their wreckage and the bones of the people who sailed on them” over the past four centuries. For added value, Butts heads each shipwreck chapter with a photo or image of the unfortunate vessel. He then closes with so many Great Lakes monster sightings that they take on an aura of authenticity just by their very number, an effect aided and abetted by his liberal use of primary sources. Younger readers who might get bogged down in Michael Varhola’s more thorough Shipwrecks and Lost Treasures: Great Lakes (2008)—or turned off by its invented dialogue and embroidered details—will find these robust historical accounts more digestible and at least as engrossing. The bibliography is dominated by Canadian sources, as befitting the book’s origin, but there's plenty here to interest American readers. (Nonfiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-77049-206-6
Page Count: 88
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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