A brief and personalized account of a history that shouldn’t be forgotten.
An Igbo family struggles as the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970) breaks out.
A war that starts on a Thursday and ends nearly three years later on another Thursday tears the country apart. A young school-age child describes the day an announcement on the radio changed everything, upending the family’s idyllic existence and forcing them on a long and arduous journey to safety. “Everything seems to be upside down,” the child tells us as the family awakens in the middle of the night, flames engulfing their house. They flee, and years pass as mother, father, and the two children travel until they finally reach a refugee camp. The young narrator makes clear that they aren’t the only ones who have suffered: “All the children look like me. Lack of food has taken our health. Lack of meals has taken our breath.” Images of supplies finally arriving and the eventual end of the war conclude the narrative on a hopeful note. The understated prose is a bit flat, and the war itself goes underexplained, though helpful backmatter offers context, noting that the war was fought between the Nigerian government and the self-declared Republic of Biafra. Digital illustrations make this important historical moment—one that many readers may be unfamiliar with—both vivid and accessible.
A brief and personalized account of a history that shouldn’t be forgotten. (Picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9781662504020
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Amazon Crossing Kids
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
Innocuous adventuring on the smallest of scales.
The Mouse and the Motorcycle (1965) upgrades to The Mice and the Rolls-Royce.
In Windsor Castle there sits a “dollhouse like no other,” replete with working plumbing, electricity, and even a full library of real, tiny books. Called Queen Mary’s Dollhouse, it also plays host to the Whiskers family, a clan of mice that has maintained the house for generations. Henry Whiskers and his cousin Jeremy get up to the usual high jinks young mice get up to, but when Henry’s little sister Isabel goes missing at the same time that the humans decide to clean the house up, the usually bookish big brother goes on the adventure of his life. Now Henry is driving cars, avoiding cats, escaping rats, and all before the upcoming mouse Masquerade. Like an extended version of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Two Bad Mice (1904), Priebe keeps this short chapter book constantly moving, with Duncan’s peppy art a cute capper. Oddly, the dollhouse itself plays only the smallest of roles in this story, and no factual information on the real Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House is included at the tale’s end (an opportunity lost).
Innocuous adventuring on the smallest of scales. (Fantasy. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-6575-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
Celebrated collaborators deliver another thoughtful delight, revealing how “making marks” links us across time and space.
The light-skinned, redheaded narrator journeys alone as flight attendants supply snacks to diverse, interspecies passengers. The kid muses, “Sometimes they ask me, ‘Why are you always going to the farthest planet?’ ”The response comes after the traveler hurtles through the solar system, lands, and levitates up to the platform where a welcoming grandmother waits: “Because it’s worth it / to cross one universe / to explore another.” Indeed, child and grandmother enter an egg-shaped, clear-domed orb and fly over a teeming savanna and a towering waterfall before disembarking, donning headlamps, and entering a cave. Inside, the pair marvel at a human handprint and ancient paintings of animals including horses, bison, and horned rhinoceroses. Yockteng’s skilled, vigorously shaded pictures suggest references to images found in Lascaux and Chauvet Cave in France. As the holiday winds down, grandmother gives the protagonist some colored pencils that had belonged to grandfather generations back. (She appears to chuckle over a nude portrait of her younger self.) The pencils “were good for making marks on paper. She gave me that too.” The child draws during the return trip, documenting the visit and sights along the journey home. “Because what I could see was infinity.” (This book was reviewed digitally with 9.8-by-19.6-inch double-page spreads viewed at 85% of actual size.)
Celebrated collaborators deliver another thoughtful delight, revealing how “making marks” links us across time and space. (Picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77306-172-6
Page Count: 52
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
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