Interesting anecdotes mitigate the missed opportunities in this history.
Primary sources enliven this history of the New York state refugee camp that housed nearly 1,000 people displaced by the Nazis.
In 1944, a U.S. Navy ship brings 982 displaced people from Italy to New York’s Fort Ontario in Oswego. The vast majority—874—are Jews, the rest are Christians, and all are refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe. They’re the beneficiaries of a far too limited American program to help some victims of horrific persecution. Augmented by photographs and drawing on first-person accounts and government records, this is a history of European refugees, many of whom are death-camp survivors, who exist in a middle ground between immigrant and prisoner. They’ve signed agreements acknowledging that they’re “guests” who aren’t allowed to work and who’ll be returned to Europe at the war’s end. But it’s still upsetting that they’re confined in the camp. In creating the camp, the War Relocation Authority drew on its expertise in running the Japanese concentration camps (called “internment camps” in the text) in the U.S.; after pointing this out, the history doesn’t ask any of the uncomfortable questions thus raised. The judgment of the government’s treatment of the White (by American standards, if not by German) refugees is mostly positive. A brief introduction to nativism and “America First” policies yields to praise of the friendships between New Yorkers and the refugees. Quoted primary sources aren’t always well-contextualized in the text.
Interesting anecdotes mitigate the missed opportunities in this history. (epilogue, timeline, bibliography) (Nonfiction. 9-11)Pub Date: June 8, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64160-383-6
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
Should attract aspiring adventurers.
After showcasing risk-taking gals in Women Daredevils (2007), Cummins introduces 10 “dauntless” women born before 1900 whose little-known deeds “contribut[ed] to science, geography, history, and cultural understanding” at a time when “proper ladies simply did not go gallivanting around the world to explore new territories.”
Starting with Louise Boyd, who traded stylish dresses for boots and breeches to explore the Arctic, and closing with Daisy Bates, who studied Australian Aborigines for 35 years, Cummins presents breezy three-to-four–page biographies of her unconventional females. The variety of their endeavors astound. Nellie Cashman “rushed” for gold in British Columbia, the Klondike and Alaska; botanist Ynes Mexia collected thousands of plants in the wilderness of Mexico, the United States and the Amazon; Lucy Cheesman sojourned with cannibals while studying insects in the South Pacific. Suffragist Annie Peck scaled Europe and South America’s highest peaks. Dutch heiress Alexandrine Tinné searched for the Nile’s source and was murdered traversing the Sahara. Delia Akeley became the first woman to cross Africa. Violet Cressy-Marcks made eight trips around the world, and Freya Stark traveled throughout the Middle East. In an engaging, informative style, Cummins highlights fascinating facts about these feisty females “who conquered the unknown.” Dramatic watercolor illustrations memorialize each.
Should attract aspiring adventurers. (author’s note and list of additional female explorers; selected bibliography, websites) (Collective biography. 9-11)Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3713-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
Still, for armchair tourists, a broad if rosy picture of our neighbor to the north.
Arrays of small color photos, cartoons and occasional comic-book pages provide visuals for a young traveler’s lively if superficial account of a quick province-by-province drive across Canada.
Bowers’ travelogue is similar in tone and content but aimed at a younger audience than her Wow Canada (2010) (and proceeds east to west before looping north, rather than the reverse). She takes her 9-year-old narrator to cities, roadside attractions and natural wonders from Cape Spear to Iqaluit. The child's observations are interspersed with side comments (“We walked around the lake until the mosquitoes had sucked all our blood”) and brief info-dumps from tour guides, a fact-loving little cousin and others. Simplification leads to some misinformation (no, the West Edmonton Mall is not the “world’s biggest,” nor is it strictly accurate to claim that Lake Michigan is “the only [great] lake not in Canada”). Ultimately and unfortunately, readers will come away knowing much more about regional foods (“Tried eating haggis. Big mistake”) and other artifacts of European settlement than newer immigrant populations or even, until the chapter on Nunavut, First Nations.
Still, for armchair tourists, a broad if rosy picture of our neighbor to the north. (maps, index) (Nonfiction. 9-11)Pub Date: May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-77049-255-4
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
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