Although it lacks a sense of passion, this app does a yeoman’s job of bringing Gandhi and his philosophy into focus....
An earnest survey of the life and thoughts of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, better known to the world as Mahatma.
This app is broken up into several distinct sections per the developer's standard approach: a gallery of photographs, a selection of narrated video shorts, a collection of quotes and a narrative text. Readers can engage by touching various highlighted words to learn more; these elaborations can range from squibs to longer sidebars. As introductions to historical figures go, this is a fairly solid one. Readers new to the man will be impressed by how many fronts he was active on: struggling against the injustices of colonialism as experienced in both South Africa and India; advocating nonviolent resistance to all forms of indignity and barbarity; promoting sacrifice, truth, lifelong learning, self-reliance, respect, simplicity and understanding. The text can skirt close to monotony at the endless mention of congresses and conventions attended, and some of the more challenging passages could stand additional investigation: “Insistence on truth makes no distinction between means and ends as they are inseparable....A follower of the principle of insistence on truth does not seek to destroy the relationship with the antagonist, but seeks to purify it.” The video clips are the strong suit here, with real transporting power.
Although it lacks a sense of passion, this app does a yeoman’s job of bringing Gandhi and his philosophy into focus. (Biography. 12 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Touchzing Media
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
A bone-chilling tale not to be ignored by the universe.
If Anne Frank had been a boy, this is the story her male counterpart might have told. At least, the very beginning of this historical novel reads as such.
It is 1939, and Yanek Gruener is a 10-year old Jew in Kraków when the Nazis invade Poland. His family is forced to live with multiple other families in a tiny apartment as his beloved neighborhood of Podgórze changes from haven to ghetto in a matter of weeks. Readers will be quickly drawn into this first-person account of dwindling freedoms, daily humiliations and heart-wrenching separations from loved ones. Yet as the story darkens, it begs the age-old question of when and how to introduce children to the extremes of human brutality. Based on the true story of the life of Jack Gruener, who remarkably survived not just one, but 10 different concentration camps, this is an extraordinary, memorable and hopeful saga told in unflinching prose. While Gratz’s words and early images are geared for young people, and are less gory than some accounts, Yanek’s later experiences bear a closer resemblance to Elie Wiesel’s Night than more middle-grade offerings, such as Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars. It may well support classroom work with adult review first.
A bone-chilling tale not to be ignored by the universe. (Historical fiction. 12 & up)Pub Date: March 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-45901-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
A well-loved author brings together, on a Maine vacation, characters from two of her books. Peter's parents have assured him that though Sheila ("The Great") Tubman and her family will be nearby, they'll have their own house; but instead, they find a shared arrangement in which the two families become thoroughly intertwined—which suits everyone but the curmudgeonly Peter. Irrepressible little brother Fudge, now five, is planning to marry Sheila, who agrees to babysit with Peter's toddler sister; there's a romance between the grandparents in the two families; and the wholesome good fun, including a neighborhood baseball game featuring an aging celebrity player, seems more important than Sheila and Peter's halfhearted vendetta. The story's a bit tame (no controversies here), but often amusingly true to life and with enough comic episodes to satisfy fans.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1990
ISBN: 0-525-44672-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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