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GALEN

Name: GALEN
Author: Marissa Moss
ISBN: 0-15-216535-5

MY LIFE IN IMPERIAL ROME

by Marissa Moss & illustrated by Marissa Moss ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2002

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The author of the “Young American Voices” series takes readers considerably further into the past for a slave’s-eye view of life in Emperor Augustus’s household. Actually, young Galen’s life is not too bad; a well-educated son of a Greek muralist, he is fed and housed comfortably, never subjected to corporal punishment—though threatened with it by bullying nemesis Agrippa, Augustine’s grandson—and has such light duties that he’s even able to spend time with an outside friend, Micio. Despite one misguided attempt at dialect—Micio: “I’m with the Greens. They’re the best team, ya know. Wanna see the stable?”—Moss expertly folds real people and incidents, as well as carefully researched details about daily life, from food and dress to chariot racing, into a suspenseful tale in which Galen wins freedom by uncovering a (historical) plot to assassinate Augustus. As usual, Moss’s hand-lettered text is easy to read, and the small, simply drawn vignettes scattered between passages and down the margins add additional color to the lively narrative. She establishes her bona fides in a final note, and covers both sets of endpapers with maps, explanations, and supplementary information. For readers not yet up to Carol Lawrence’s Roman Mystery series, this makes an equally agreeable combination of story and history. (glossary) (Fiction. 8-10)

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2002

ISBN: 0-15-216535-5

Page Count: 48

Publisher: Silver Whistle/Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2002

Categories:

CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
SPYING ON SPIES
by Marissa Moss ; illustrated by Marissa Moss

- BOOK REVIEW
I AM A MASTERPIECE!
by Mia Armstrong with Marissa Moss ; illustrated by Alexandra Thompson

- BOOK REVIEW
TALIA'S CODEBOOK FOR MATHLETES
by Marissa Moss ; illustrated by Marissa Moss

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BACH'S BIG ADVENTURE

by Sallie Ketcham ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1999

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PLB 0-531-33140-7 Ketcham’s first book is based on an allegedly true story of a childhood incident in the life of Johann Sebastian Bach. It starts with a couple of pages regaling the Bach home and all the Johanns in the family, who made their fame through music. After his father’s death, Johann Sebastian goes to live with his brother, Johann Christoph, where he boasts that he is the best organist in the world. Johann Christoph contradicts him: “Old Adam Reincken is the best.” So Johann Sebastian sets out to hear the master himself. In fact, he is humbled to tears, but there is hope that he will be the world’s best organist one day. Johann Sebastian emerges as little more than a brat, Reincken as more of a suggestion than a character. Bush’s illustrations are most transporting when offering details of the landscape, but his protagonist is too impish to give the story much authority. (Picture book. 5-9)

Pub Date: March 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-531-30140-0

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Orchard

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999

Categories:

CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION | CHILDREN'S ENTERTAINMENT & SPORTS

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THE BABE AND I

by David A. Adler ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1999

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Adler (also with Widener, Lou Gehrig, 1997, etc.) sets his fictional story during the week of July 14, 1932, in the Bronx, when the news items that figure in this tale happened. A boy gets a dime for his birthday, instead of the bicycle he longs for, because it is the Great Depression, and everyone who lives in his neighborhood is poor. While helping his friend Jacob sell newspapers, he discovers that his own father, who leaves the house with a briefcase each day, is selling apples on Webster Avenue along with the other unemployed folk. Jacob takes the narrator to Yankee Stadium with the papers, and people don’t want to hear about the Coney Island fire or the boy who stole so he could get something to eat in jail. They want to hear about Babe Ruth and his 25th homer. As days pass, the narrator keeps selling papers, until the astonishing day when Ruth himself buys a paper from the boy with a five-dollar bill and tells him to keep the change. The acrylic paintings bask in the glow of a storied time, where even row houses and the elevated train have a warm, solid presence. The stadium and Webster Avenue are monuments of memory rather than reality in a style that echoes Thomas Hart Benton’s strong color and exaggerated figures. (Picture book. 5-9)