Kyi’s fresh voice will have readers picturing themselves in the shoes of these real-life survivors.
Outlandishly enthralling tales of survival under extreme—extremely extreme—circumstances, peppered with do-and-don’t tips.
Four encounters with dire straits make up the body of this collection, but they are told in slices as Kyi enters the picture to help readers understand what the people did right and what they did wrong. One finds a small group abandoned on an ice floe in Arctic waters, another chronicles a young man trapped thousands of feet underground in a mine, and two others tell of the aftermath of plane and boat wrecks. First comes the hard-wired response to fight or flee—then there’s hunger, thirst, freezing, broiling, getting enough oxygen and contending with all the little tricks the brain plays, including hallucinations and delusions. Parkins does a good job of blending sheer terror with glimmers of hope in his drawings, and it is hope—the survival instinct—that drives the book along. As Kyi recounts the four main stories with a controlled but dramatic flair, it is the sidebars that convince readers that survival is possible under the most crazy-wild situations. Post-trauma issues are also addressed, which can be as fearsome as the event itself.
Kyi’s fresh voice will have readers picturing themselves in the shoes of these real-life survivors. (Nonfiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-55451-683-4
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
An inventive introduction to a fascinating historical figure.
Another collaborative effort by the team that created The Poet King of Tezcoco: A Great Leader of Ancient Mexico (2007) chronicles the life of a controversial figure in pre-colonial Mesoamerica.
The indigenous woman who would serve as Hernán Cortés’ interpreter and companion was born in the early 1500s as Malinali and later christened Marina. She is now called La Malinche. Besides serving as translator to the Spaniard, she also gave him advice on native customs, religious beliefs and the ways of the Aztec. While Marina’s decision to help the Spanish in their often brutal quest for supremacy has led to many negative associations, others see her as the mother of all Mexicans, as she and Cortés had the first recorded mestizo. Although many of the details surrounding the specifics of Marina’s life were unrecorded, Serrano strengthens the narrative with quotations by her contemporaries and provides a balanced look at the life of a complicated, oft-maligned woman. Headers provide structure as events sometimes shift from the specific to the very broad, and some important facts are glossed over or relegated to the timeline. Reminiscent of pre-colonial documents, the illustrations convey both Marina’s adulation of Cortés and the violence of the Spanish conquest, complete with severed limbs, decapitations and more.
An inventive introduction to a fascinating historical figure. (map, chronology, glossary, sources and further reading) (Nonfiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55498-111-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: Sept. 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
An insightful glimpse into a key period in Alcott’s life and women in nursing.
During the Civil War, Louisa May Alcott served as a volunteer nurse, caring for Union soldiers in Washington, D.C., between December 12, 1862, and January 21, 1863. This well-researched biographical vignette explores the brief but pivotal episode in Alcott’s life.
An abolitionist, Alcott longed to fight in the Union Army, but she did her part by serving as a nurse. Alcott met the female nursing requirements: She was 30, plain, strong and unmarried. Krull describes her challenging solo journey from Massachusetts by train and ship and her lonely arrival in Washington at the “overcrowded, damp, dark, airless” hospital. For three weeks she nursed and provided “motherly” support for her “boys” before succumbing to typhoid fever, forcing her to return to Massachusetts. Krull shows how Alcott’s short tenure as a nurse affected her life, inspiring her to publish letters she sent home as Hospital Sketches. This honest account of the war earned rave reviews and taught Alcott to use her own experiences in her writing, leading to Little Women. Peppered with Alcott’s own words, the straightforward text is enhanced by bold, realistic illustrations rendered in digital oils on gessoed canvas. A somber palette reinforces the grim wartime atmosphere, dramatically highlighting Alcott in her red cape and white nurse’s apron.
An insightful glimpse into a key period in Alcott’s life and women in nursing. (notes on women in medicine and the Battle of Fredericksburg, sources, map) (Picture book/biography. 9-11)Pub Date: March 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8027-9668-4
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: Oct. 23, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2012
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