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COOK'S COOK

Name: COOK'S COOK
Author: Gavin Bishop
ISBN: 978-1-776572-04-5

THE COOK WHO COOKED FOR CAPTAIN COOK

by Gavin Bishop ; illustrated by Gavin Bishop ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2018

Appealing illustrations and the lure of an insider’s account make this a delectable adventure.

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With one arm and a hook, John Thompson cooked for the seamen of Lt. James Cook’s scientific expedition to the South Seas from 1768 to 1771.

New Zealand author/illustrator Bishop offers a crew’s-eye view of an early ’round-the-world voyage that sailed from Plymouth, England, across the Atlantic to South America, rounded Cape Horn, circumnavigated New Zealand, and sailed along the coasts of New Holland (Australia), Java, and West Africa before returning to England three years later. The information begins with a front-endpaper cross-section of the overcrowded HMS Endeavour and continues chronologically, as much in the blue-green–and–sepia-toned spreads as in the journallike text. Speech bubbles contain comments from the cook; on torn-parchment insets readers find printed recipes including “seared shark steaks,” “dog and breadfruit stew,” “poor knights pudding,” and the ubiquitous pease porridge. The watercolor-and–acrylic-ink images show the provisions, the sailors at work, the scientists and their servants (including at least one freed slave), scenery, wildlife, and a culminating map of the voyage. Two black servants represent the only people of color depicted aboard the Endeavour; the rest of the crew, including Thompson, present white. Only 56 of the 94 people onboard returned to England; Thompson himself dies before they reach South Africa and follows the rest of the journey as a sea gull—or so the crew believed. No sources are supplied, and libraries beware: The cover flaps obscure interesting facts.

Appealing illustrations and the lure of an insider’s account make this a delectable adventure. (Informational picture book. 7-10)

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-776572-04-5

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Gecko Press

Review Posted Online: July 29, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018

Categories:

CHILDREN'S HISTORY

- BOOK REVIEW
FRIEND
by Gavin Bishop ; illustrated by Gavin Bishop

- BOOK REVIEW
MISTER WHISTLER
by Margaret Mahy ; illustrated by Gavin Bishop

- BOOK REVIEW
FRIENDS: SNAKE AND LIZARD
by Joy Crowley & illustrated by Gavin Bishop

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THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

From the All About America series

by Hilarie N. Staton ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2012

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Shot through with vague generalities and paired to a mix of equally generic period images and static new art, this overview remorselessly sucks all the juice from its topic.

This survey of the growth of industries in this country from the Colonial period to the post–World War II era is written in the driest of textbook-ese: “Factories needed good transportation so that materials could reach them and so that materials could reach buyers”; “The metal iron is obtained by heating iron ore”; “In 1860, the North said that free men, not slaves, should do the work.” This text is supplemented by a jumble of narrative-overview blocks, boxed side observations and terse captions on each thematic spread. The design is packed with overlapping, misleadingly seamless and rarely differentiated mixes of small, heavily trimmed contemporary prints or (later) photos and drab reconstructions of workshop or factory scenes, along with pictures of significant inventions and technological innovations (which are, in several cases, reduced to background design elements). The single, tiny map has no identifying labels. Other new entries in the All About America series deal similarly with Explorers, Trappers, and Pioneers, A Nation of Immigrants and Stagecoaches and Railroads. Utilitarian, at best—but more likely to dim reader interest than kindle it. (index, timeline, resource lists) (Nonfiction. 8-10)

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-7534-6670-4

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Kingfisher

Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012

Categories:

CHILDREN'S HISTORY

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WILLA

THE STORY OF WILLA CATHER, AN AMERICAN WRITER

by Amy Ehrlich illustrated by Wendell Minor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 27, 2016

A simplistic treatment for an audience likely unfamiliar with its subject.

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Ehrlich renders an admiring portrait of Cather, focusing on the relationship between her writing and the places she lived and visited.

Willa and family followed her grandparents from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883. Willa was lonely, but she had a pony and freedom to roam. When her father traded farming for real estate, the family moved to Red Cloud. She read keenly, enjoying adult friends, who "were more interesting than children and...talked to Willa in a serious and cultured way." During her freshman year at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, an essay’s publication changed Willa's path from doctor to writer. Cather worked at magazines in Pittsburgh and New York. The writer Sarah Orne Jewett urged her to focus on her own writing. Journeys to Europe, the American Southwest, back to Nebraska and Virginia—all resonated in her accomplished fiction. Ehrlich writes with little inflection, sometimes adopting Cather's viewpoint. The Civil War and slavery are briefly treated. (Cather's maternal grandparents were slaveholders.) Native Americans receive only incidental mentions: that Red Cloud is named for the Oglala Lakota chief and that, as children, Willa and her brothers had "imagined themselves in Indian country in the Southwest desert. What adventures they would have!" Minor's watercolor-and-gouache pictures depict bucolic prairie scenes and town and city life; meadowlarks appear frequently.

A simplistic treatment for an audience likely unfamiliar with its subject. (timeline, thumbnail biographies of American women writers of Cather's time, bibliography) (Biography. 7-10)