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HERE COMES ELEANOR

Name: HERE COMES ELEANOR
Author: Virginia Veeder Westervelt
ISBN: 1-888105-33-X

A NEW BIOGRAPHY OF ELEANOR ROOSEVELT FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

by Virginia Veeder Westervelt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 15, 1999

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A serviceable biography of one of the US’s most extraordinary citizens, but not nearly in the class of Barbara Cooney’s Eleanor (1996) or Russell Freedman’s Eleanor: A Life of Discovery (1993). Westervelt has to sustain a breathless pace to fit the rich story of Eleanor Roosevelt’s life into these pages. She begins with the image of the golden-haired, painfully shy child, whose plainness was disdained by a beautiful mother, and whose adored, alcoholic father was mostly absent. She found refuge in study and in service to others from a very young age; when she married her cousin Franklin, she was given away by her uncle, President Theodore Roosevelt. That began decades of public life during which she supported her husband as he rose through public offices to the presidency, raised their children, fought off a domineering mother-in-law, and carved out her own life of tireless speaking, writing, and social action. Westervelt touches very lightly on the subject of Lucy Mercer and Eleanor’s possible liaisons, keeping the focus on the tremendous number of activities Eleanor undertook during WWII and beyond Franklin’s death. The lengthy biography unaccountably leaves off Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book; this is a useful biography, but not a magical one. (index) (Biography. 9-12)

Pub Date: Jan. 15, 1999

ISBN: 1-888105-33-X

Page Count: 142

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1998

Categories:

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT HISTORY | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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ZORA NEALE HURSTON

SOUTHERN STORYTELLER

by Della A. Yannuzzi ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1996

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Yannuzzi (Wilma Mankiller, 1994, not reviewed), awkwardly rehashing information better handled by one of her sources—Mary Lyons's Sorrow's Kitchen (1993)—seldom peeks below the surface of Hurston's checkered literary career and notably unstable private life. A luminary of the Harlem Renaissance, Hurston later became an enthusiastic collector of African-American tales, lore, and cultural practices—but, unable to hold on to money, friends, husbands, or benefactors, died in poverty and remained almost forgotten until the mid-1970s. Through a selection of telling incidents and brief quoted comments, Hurston's intelligence and strong personality come across, but her written work is passed over virtually unassessed in a dry recitation of titles and content summaries that reads like CIP notes. Yannuzzi does not explain how an author supposedly endowed with ``a big talent and a strong will to succeed'' met with such mixed reviews and produced so many rejected manuscripts; readers will come away with only vague ideas of the quality of Hurston's thought or writing. This may be more detailed than Patricia McKissack's shorter Zora Neale Hurston, Writer and Storyteller (1992), but it offers no further insight. (b&w photos, chronology, notes, bibliography, glossary, index) (Biography. 10-12)

Pub Date: April 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-89490-685-2

Page Count: 104

Publisher: Enslow

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1996

Categories:

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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BIODIVERSITY

by Dorothy Hinshaw Patent & illustrated by William Muñoz ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 18, 1996

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Patent (Children Save the Rain Forest, p. 903, etc.) stresses the importance of protecting the planet's rich gene pool for the survival of all species, and makes clear that seemingly insignificant species may provide medicines and products of great usefulness. With plants and animals in tropical Costa Rica and the more temperate US as models, Patent demonstrates how life forms evolve, adapt, and become extinct. She describes the natural forces of evolution and the threat posed by people. Readers learn of the private and public efforts to catalog and conserve plants and animals, e.g., Costa Rica's National Institute of Biodiversity, a government program that trains local people to collect and categorize specimens. Although Patent mentions the government agreements with drug companies that encourage exploration in exchange for a percentage of the profit when useful substances are identified, there is no discussion of the ethical considerations. The many handsome, full-color photographs are not always well placed and sometimes are only marginally related to the text. Still, this is an attractive and personal discussion of an important issue. (glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 10-12)