After the Homestead Act of 1862 and its offer of 160 acres of prairie land for $18.00 and five years of labor, men and women by the thousands took up the challenge and moved onto the prairie. They built soddy houses, tilled the soil by hand, and endured cold, fires, tornadoes, grasshoppers, and drought. Before 1900, fewer than a third of the homesteaders had “proved up,” that is, survived the five years on the land required to obtain ownership. Patent and Mu§oz (Apple Trees, p. 199, etc.) attempt to recreate the era by describing the daily life of the homesteaders, with text, historic documents, and full-color photographs of a 20th-century family living “the old way.” The link between the old and new is jarring, especially when contemporary and historical photographs appear together, e.g., an archival scene of a soddy across from a shot of a modern farmer in a baseball cap plowing a field with beautifully brushed horses. Such contrasts do not further the text, and, with pictures of modern gardens and close-ups of onions and gourds, detract from the compelling historical information. (map, index) (Nonfiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-8027-8638-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1998
Whirls of tiny, brightly dressed people’some with wings—fill Kleven’s kaleidoscopic portraits of sun-drenched Los Angeles neighborhoods and landmarks; the Los Angeles—based authors supply equally colorful accounts of the city’s growth, festivals, and citizens, using an appended chronology to squeeze in a few more anecdotes. As does Kathy Jakobsen’s My New York (1998), Jaskol and Lewis’s book captures a vivid sense of a major urban area’s bustle, diversity, and distinctive character; young Angelenos will get a hearty dose of civic pride, and children everywhere will find new details in the vibrant illustrations at every pass. (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-10)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-525-46214-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
Koller (Bouncing on the Bed, p. 143, etc.) portrays a Narragansett nickommoh, or celebratory gathering, from which it is very likely the tradition of Thanksgiving was drawn. As explained in an exemplary note—brief, clear, interesting—at the end of the book, these gatherings occurred 13 times a year, once each lunar month. The harvest gathering is one of the larger gatherings: a great lodge was built, copious food was prepared, and music and dance extended deep into the night. Koller laces the text with a good selection of Narragansett words, found in the glossary (although there is no key to pronunciation, even for words such as Taqountikeeswush and Puttuckquapuonck). The text is written as a chanted prose poem, with much repetition, which can be both incantatory and hackneyed, as when “frost lies thick on the fields at dawn, and the winged ones pass overhead in great numbers.” Mostly the phrases are stirring—as are Sewall’s scratchboard evocations—and often inspirational—for this nickommoh puts to shame what has become known as the day before the launch of the holiday shopping season. (Picture book. 6-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-689-81094-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
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