A “rad” alternative to less-inclusive albums, such as Cynthia Chin-Lee, Megan Halsey and Sean Addy’s Amelia to Zora (2005).
Rousing tributes to 26 women who didn’t keep their heads or voices down.
Reserving “X” for “the women whose names we don’t know,” Schatz presents an unusually diverse gallery of activists. Along with the predictable likes of the Grimke sisters, Billie Jean King and Zora Neale Hurston, it includes Patti Smith, blacklisted musical prodigy Hazel Scott, Mexican-American journalist Jovita Idar and transgender performance artist Kate Bornstein. Furthermore, the author extends her definition of “radical” beyond the arenas of politics and social causes to include Florence Griffith-Joyner (“Who showed us how to run like a girl”), Rachel Carson, Temple Grandin and Dr. Virginia Apgar (developer of the Apgar Score for newborns). The author closes with an above-average reading list and activity suggestions that include a pithy second alphabet of “things that you can do to be rad!” Readers will come away energized if not particularly informed by her enthusiastic but vague profiles (“Patti tried working at a regular job, and she tried going to college, but her creative dreams were too powerful to put on hold”). The combination of hair-fine type, bright, monochrome background colors, and stylized, high-contrast portraits at each entry’s head add up to an underground-'zine look overall.
A “rad” alternative to less-inclusive albums, such as Cynthia Chin-Lee, Megan Halsey and Sean Addy’s Amelia to Zora (2005). (websites) (Collective biography. 11-14)Pub Date: March 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-87286-683-6
Page Count: 64
Publisher: City Lights
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
If Freedman wrote the history textbooks, we would have many more historians. Beginning with an engrossing description of the Boston Tea Party in 1773, he brings the reader the lives of the American colonists and the events leading up to the break with England. The narrative approach to history reads like a good story, yet Freedman tucks in the data that give depth to it. The inclusion of all the people who lived during those times and the roles they played, whether small or large are acknowledged with dignity. The story moves backwards from the Boston Tea Party to the beginning of the European settlement of what they called the New World, and then proceeds chronologically to the signing of the Declaration. “Your Rights and Mine” traces the influence of the document from its inception to the present ending with Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. The full text of the Declaration and a reproduction of the original are included. A chronology of events and an index are helpful to the young researcher. Another interesting feature is “Visiting the Declaration of Independence.” It contains a short review of what happened to the document in the years after it was written, a useful Web site, and a description of how it is displayed and protected today at the National Archives building in Washington, D.C. Illustrations from the period add interest and detail. An excellent addition to the American history collection and an engrossing read. (Nonfiction. 9-13)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-8234-1448-5
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2000
Logically pointing out that the American cowboy archetype didn’t spring up from nowhere, Sandler, author of Cowboys (1994) and other volumes in the superficial, if luxuriously illustrated, “Library of Congress Book” series, looks back over 400 years of cattle tending in North America. His coverage ranges from the livestock carried on Columbus’s second voyage to today’s herding-by-helicopter operations. Here, too, the generous array of dramatic early prints, paintings, and photos are more likely to capture readers’ imaginations than the generality-ridden text. But among his vague comments about the characters, values, and culture passed by Mexican vaqueros to later arrivals from the Eastern US, Sadler intersperses nods to the gauchos, llaneros, and other South American “cowmen,” plus the paniolos of Hawaii, and the renowned African-American cowboys. He also decries the role film and popular literature have played in suppressing the vaqueros’ place in the history of the American West. He tackles an uncommon topic, and will broaden the historical perspective of many young cowboy fans, but his glance at modern vaqueros seems to stop at this country’s borders. Young readers will get a far more detailed, vivid picture of vaquero life and work from the cowboy classics in his annotated bibliography. (Notes, glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2001
ISBN: 0-8050-6019-7
Page Count: 116
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2000
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