An enlightening tale, enlivened by droll, retro illustrations.
By donning his glasses, George Washington thwarts soldiers from committing treason.
Castrovilla, who’s written four other books about the Revolutionary War, describes Washington’s need for glasses as an embarrassment (“It was a secret”). She uses this fact to launch a storyline about the Newburgh Conspiracy (“It was a secret,” she repeats), a plan hatched by frustrated army officers to storm Congress and demand payment. Having defeated the British, Washington refuses to allow his new government to be toppled. His spectacles, illustrated by Harney in shimmering sepia, appear only when he slams his office door to read in private. During one of those sessions, he reads Congress’ answer to him about when his officers will be paid—soon, they say. Washington shares this response in a windy speech that doesn’t convince them to stand down. Putting on his spectacles to read them the actual letter from Congress, he prefaces his remarks with an apology (“I have grown gray in your service and now find myself growing blind”); they are moved to tears by his sacrifice. The book uses a variety of fonts, from hand-lettered notes to onomatopoeic sound effects, alongside comical close-ups of Washington’s bug eyes and emotive crowd scenes that lend the story a pleasing, old-timey feel. Allowing readers to experience this event through Washington’s lens, literally, makes for an original, thought-provoking framing, and it’s hard not to draw a connection with the January 6 insurrection—though with a vastly different outcome.
An enlightening tale, enlivened by droll, retro illustrations. (author’s note, the Newburgh Conspiracy players, glasses in 1783, about the research, bibliography) (Informational picture book. 7-10)Pub Date: tomorrow
ISBN: 9781662680434
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Calkins Creek/Astra Books for Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
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
A simplistic treatment for an audience likely unfamiliar with its subject.
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)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-689-86573-2
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
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