A solid account for both history buffs and report-writers.
A conversational examination of the life of the 32nd president.
Kanefield provides readers with an intimate examination of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, following the president from his birth in Hyde Park, New York, to his death in Warm Springs, Georgia. Along the way, readers discover Roosevelt’s complexities, his personal life, and his policies. These include well-known shining moments, such as his electoral victory in 1932 and the political and gender diversity of his cabinet, as well as darker moments in his life, including his ongoing affair with Lucy Mercer and his lavish lifestyle as a young man. Although Kanefield’s storytelling isn’t always smooth, overall it flows in a friendly and welcoming style that reluctant readers will appreciate. Photographs and supplemental boxes of contextual information interrupt when additional background information is needed. The backmatter is also helpful, and it includes a timeline, bibliography, notes on the chapters, and selections of FDR’s writing for curious readers. Those readers will need to flip back and forth between narrative and endnotes for sourcing information, however, as they are not directly anchored to the text. Those familiar with Kanefield’s other biographical works will not be disappointed.
A solid account for both history buffs and report-writers. (Biography. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3402-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
While the historical record is regrettably light on this Shoshone teenager, Berne stitches together a compelling narrative from what is known, taking care to bust myths along the way. Sacagawea had been kidnapped by the Hidatsa and sold or given to Toussaint Charbonneau as a wife before she was 14. Because she knew both the Shoshone and Hidatsa languages, she was seen as an invaluable link for communication to the Lewis and Clark expedition, which hired her French-Canadian trader husband. During the 16-month journey (1805-06), she acted as translator, located edible food and was a visible symbol of peace (no war party would have a woman), all the while carrying and nurturing her baby son, Jean-Baptiste. The author stresses the paucity of information even as she extrapolates what she can; Sacagawea's kindness and resourcefulness are evident from the Lewis and Clark records, for instance. Sidebars and illustrations enrich the account (about Native-American baby care, trade goods, Lewis’s Newfoundland dog, Seaman). Some repetition could have been edited out, but this is still a good addition to this biographical series. (glossary, bibliography, source notes, index) (Biography. 9-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4027-6845-3
Page Count: 124
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hodgman looks back humorously at her 1960s childhood in the Rochester, N.Y., area, recalling incidents that pained her at the time or seem embarrassing in retrospect. There was the way she bragged about her reading before she knew better, the fourth-grade nickname (Hampton Schnoz) bestowed by a classmate she’d asked about her appearance and the total lack of athletic ability that left her at the bottom of the climbing ropes. She includes poems from her “bird sequence,” written in third grade. Not all events are mortifying. Some just reflect what it was like to be young at the time. There is the longed-for Petunia the Climbing Skunk from F.A.O. Schwartz that she didn't get for Christmas, a lovely description of birthday-party entertainments that includes Spiderweb and the Kim Game and the scary school-bus driver who threatened his misbehaving passengers with a rifle. Some anecdotes are very short; others go on for several pages. Occasional photographs of herself and her husband, as well as both their families back to their grandparents, will help readers picture these children from long ago. There is no hint of the larger political turmoil of the time. Rueful, funny and nostalgic, this will ring true to parents and grandparents and may be even more appealing to them than to a child readership—whose impression of the 1960s will be very different. (Memoir. 9-12)
Pub Date: May 10, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8050-8705-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
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