Well-intentioned, well-researched, but awkwardly written considering the caliber of the scholar and his expected scholarship.
“In your hands you are holding my book…my very first venture in writing for young readers,” Gates writes in a preface.
And readers can tell…though probably not in the way Gates and co-author Bolden may have aimed for. The book opens with a gripping scene of formerly enslaved African-Americans celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation. It proceeds to engagingly unfold the facts that led to Reconstruction and its reaction, Jim Crow, until it disrupts the flow with oddly placed facts about Gates’ family’s involvement in the war, name-dropping of other historians, and the occasional conspicuous exclamation (“Land! That’s what his people most hungered for”). Flourishes such as that last sit uneasily with the extensive quotations from secondary sources for adults, as if Gates and Bolden are not sure whether their conceptual audience is young readers or adults, an uncertainty established as early as Gates’ preface. They also too-frequently relegate the vital roles of black women, such as Harriet Tubman, to sidebars or scatter their facts throughout the book, implicitly framing the era as a struggle between African-American men and white men. In the end, this acts as a reminder to readers that, although a person may have a Ph.D. and have written successfully in some genres and media, that does not mean they can write in every one, even with the help of a veteran in the field.
Well-intentioned, well-researched, but awkwardly written considering the caliber of the scholar and his expected scholarship. (selected sources, endnotes, index) (Nonfiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 29, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-26204-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scholastic Nonfiction
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Still, this will give general readers hints of what draws spelunkers and urban archaeologists to probe below our planet’s...
MacLeod digs into historical records (though not particularly deeply) to shine a light on selected tunnels and other underground installations that have fallen into obscurity.
Her chosen sites, evidently selected more for geographical spread than similarity, range from the ruins of Tenochtitlán’s Templo Mayor below Mexico City and a West Virginia cave that became an important secret source of saltpeter for the Confederacy to tunnels beneath Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, used by Chinese immigrants and bootleggers, and a huge bomb shelter built for Congress during the Cold War. All have intriguing histories, though much of what the author relates is speculative or, like the scene-setting miniepisodes that open each chapter, invented to crank up the drama. She also doesn’t consistently drill down to specific details about how these subterranean wonders were constructed or, in more modern times, reconstructed. Furthermore, though most of the images and period photos add informative visual notes, some filler has been mixed in, and several sidebars are poorly placed—being, at best, only marginally related to adjacent passages.
Still, this will give general readers hints of what draws spelunkers and urban archaeologists to probe below our planet’s surface. (Nonfiction. 10-12)Pub Date: July 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-55451-631-5
Page Count: 88
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The genesis of world-rocking inventions is often mysterious; their fate upon people not so much, here given a tantalizing if...
Helfand brings a propulsive optimism to this graphic account of the Industrial Revolution.
Meet Johann Gutenberg, thinking, thinking, thinking big. “What if instead of copying text one word at a time… / …there was a way to reproduce entire pages?” Scribes took five years to copy the Bible. Helfand doesn’t mention the beauty of their work, but Gutenberg’s invention was revolutionary: more people received more news and knowledge. Readers follow Kumar’s clean panels as James Watt makes his entrance, then Eli Whitney, John Kay, Robert Fulton, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford. Helfand is mostly interested in the mechanical wizardry and tenacity of these inventers, which is slippery to capture: “About four times as much steel could be produced with Bessemer’s technique.” Helfand digs the book’s grave by half-heartedly tackling the social consequences. Readers learn that “countless skilled weavers suddenly found themselves out of work,” which is shrugged off: “But the inventions that cost the weavers their jobs were few and far between.” Except “as large landowners snatched up more and more farmland, small farmers found themselves out of work and eager for factory jobs.” Except: “Men and women were operating like clockwork; as efficiently as the machines that dominated the industrial age. The only problem was… / Ford’s employees hated it.”
The genesis of world-rocking inventions is often mysterious; their fate upon people not so much, here given a tantalizing if garbled peek, then left unexplored. (Graphic nonfiction. 9-12)Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-93-81182-28-4
Page Count: 92
Publisher: Campfire
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
