Shulevitz recasts the impersonal account of a great medieval Jewish traveler, who set out to see as many of the places mentioned in the Bible as possible, as a first-person narrative threaded with vivid comments about smells, hazards, misfortunes, spectacles and local legends encountered along the way. The travelogue takes readers over land and water from Tudela in northern Spain to Rome’s Arch of Titus and on to Constantinople’s Christmas spectacle, through Syria to Crusader-held Jerusalem, then to Persia, and finally Egypt and Mount Sinai. To the text, Shulevitz adds grainy illustrations, done in muted colors and echoing the European pictorial style of the times, with crowd scenes and cityscapes shown in flattened perspective and small, clumsy-looking ships tossed upon wide seas. Capped by a long note and a meaty booklist, this, like James Rumford’s much briefer Traveling Man: The Journey of Ibn Battuta, 1325-1354 (2001), not only affords glimpses of distant, exotic places, but also captures the wonder and the terror of travel at a time when living through even a short trip was considered a miracle. (Picture book. 8-12)
Pub Date: April 6, 2005
ISBN: 0-374-37754-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2005
An emotional, much-needed historical graphic novel.
Sandy and his family, Japanese Canadians, experience hatred and incarceration during World War II.
Sandy Saito loves baseball, and the Vancouver Asahi ballplayers are his heroes. But when they lose in the 1941 semifinals, Sandy’s dad calls it a bad omen. Sure enough, in December 1941, Japan bombs Pearl Harbor in the U.S. The Canadian government begins to ban Japanese people from certain areas, moving them to “dormitories” and setting a curfew. Sandy wants to spend time with his father, but as a doctor, his dad is busy, often sneaking out past curfew to work. One night Papa is taken to “where he [is] needed most,” and the family is forced into an internment camp. Life at the camp isn’t easy, and even with some of the Asahi players playing ball there, it just isn’t the same. Trying to understand and find joy again, Sandy struggles with his new reality and relationship with his father. Based on the true experiences of Japanese Canadians and the Vancouver Asahi team, this graphic novel is a glimpse of how their lives were affected by WWII. The end is a bit abrupt, but it’s still an inspiring and sweet look at how baseball helped them through hardship. The illustrations are all in a sepia tone, giving it an antique look and conveying the emotions and struggles. None of the illustrations of their experiences are overly graphic, making it a good introduction to this upsetting topic for middle-grade readers.
An emotional, much-needed historical graphic novel. (afterword, further resources) (Graphic historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5253-0334-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The whimsy is slight—the story is not—and both its interest and its vocabulary are for the youngest members of this age...
Beverly Cleary has written all kinds of books (the most successful ones about the irrepressible Henry Huggins) but this is her first fantasy.
Actually it's plain clothes fantasy grounded in the everyday—except for the original conceit of a mouse who can talk and ride a motorcycle. A toy motorcycle, which belongs to Keith, a youngster, who comes to the hotel where Ralph lives with his family; Ralph and Keith become friends, Keith gives him a peanut butter sandwich, but finally Ralph loses the motorcycle—it goes out with the dirty linen. Both feel dreadfully; it was their favorite toy; but after Keith gets sick, and Ralph manages to find an aspirin for him in a nearby room, and the motorcycle is returned, it is left with Ralph....
The whimsy is slight—the story is not—and both its interest and its vocabulary are for the youngest members of this age group. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 22, 1965
ISBN: 0380709244
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1965
BOOK TO SCREEN
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