For die-hard fans.
Learn about the real and fictional life and times of Laura Ingalls Wilder with hands-on activities and historical tidbits.
The first part of this educational companion title focuses on the first eight Little House books, each chapter focusing on a different book. The First Four Years and Wilder’s life after are covered in Part 2. Historical and geographical information, along with miscellany about daily life (cooking, farm work, animal husbandry, clothing, etc.), are presented in bullet points, with more general information in callout boxes, some specifically delineating fact from fiction. Offensive/dated terms found in Wilder’s texts are highlighted. Each segment also includes crafts, games, recipes (lengthy and targeting experienced cooks), and other activities prompting readers to “live like” Laura or Almanzo. Chapter-ending questions, educational and moralistic in tone, often prompt specific answers rather than natural discussion. Whipple applauds Wilder for writing her family’s story “realistically,” including racial prejudices of the time, asserting that she “let readers like you decide what to think.” In her introduction, Whipple acknowledges the “complicated pioneer history,” noting that the way “white settlers treated the American Indians…was often shameful.” Unfortunately, although Whipple encourages readers to reflect on these “uncomfortable” issues and consider also the Osage side of the story, closing her introduction by chipperly quoting the virulently racist Ma’s “All’s well that ends well” sounds a particularly sour note. Unless otherwise noted, characters are assumed white and Christian.
For die-hard fans. (glossary, further reading, and places to visit) (Nonfiction, 7-12).)Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64160-166-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care.
In 1977, the oil carrier Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil into a formerly pristine Alaskan ocean inlet, killing millions of birds, animals, and fish. Despite a cleanup, crude oil is still there.
The Winters foretold the destructive powers of the atomic bomb allusively in The Secret Project (2017), leaving the actuality to the backmatter. They make no such accommodations to young audiences in this disturbing book. From the dark front cover, on which oily blobs conceal a seabird, to the rescuer’s sad face on the back, the mother-son team emphasizes the disaster. A relatively easy-to-read and poetically heightened text introduces the situation. Oil is pumped from the Earth “all day long, all night long, / day after day, year after year” in “what had been unspoiled land, home to Native people // and thousands of caribou.” The scale of extraction is huge: There’s “a giant pipeline” leading to “enormous ships.” Then, crash. Rivers of oil gush out over three full-bleed wordless pages. Subsequent scenes show rocks, seabirds, and sea otters covered with oil. Finally, 30 years later, animals have returned to a cheerful scene. “But if you lift a rock… // oil / seeps / up.” For an adult reader, this is heartbreaking. How much more difficult might this be for an animal-loving child?
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care. (author’s note, further reading) (Informational picture book. 9-12)Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3077-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
Essential.
A measured corrective to pervasive myths about what is often referred to as the “first Thanksgiving.”
Contextualizing them within a Native perspective, Newell (Passamaquoddy) touches on the all-too-familiar elements of the U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving and its origins and the history of English colonization in the territory now known as New England. In addition to the voyage and landfall of the Mayflower, readers learn about the Doctrine of Discovery that arrogated the lands of non-Christian peoples to European settlers; earlier encounters between the Indigenous peoples of the region and Europeans; and the Great Dying of 1616-1619, which emptied the village of Patuxet by 1620. Short, two- to six-page chapters alternate between the story of the English settlers and exploring the complex political makeup of the region and the culture, agriculture, and technology of the Wampanoag—all before covering the evolution of the holiday. Refreshingly, the lens Newell offers is a Native one, describing how the Wampanoag and other Native peoples received the English rather than the other way around. Key words ranging from estuary to discover are printed in boldface in the narrative and defined in a closing glossary. Nelson (a member of the Leech Lake Band of Minnesota Chippewa) contributes soft line-and-color illustrations of the proceedings. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Essential. (Nonfiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-72637-4
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Scholastic Nonfiction
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
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