Methinks the introduction doth protest too much. From the start Harrison attempts to deglamorize the piratical life with cold hard facts and sentences like, “The life of a pirate was not fun.” Says you! As Burr’s deeply realistic and heavily detailed paintings soon attest, piracy makes for exciting subject matter. Twenty poems in this collection detail every aspect of those scurvy lads’ lives, from the terrible food and flogging to the fights and captures that went with the job. In giving a bit of realism to the subject matter, the poems can get downright brutal; a pirate youngling grunts—“Unh!”—with each lash of the “Cat-O’-Nine-Tails” as he regrets his rule-breaking. Yet while Harrison's poetry scans, his poems range from free verse to erratic rhymes (as when he rhymes “endure” with “yours” in “Ship's Rules”). Child readers will come for the subject matter, and they’ll stay for the lush art. A section at the end offers additional information on what an average pirate’s life would have been like. (bibliography) (Poetry. 8-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59078-455-6
Page Count: 60
Publisher: Wordsong/Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
Categories: CHILDREN'S POETRY | CHILDREN'S HISTORY
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A measured corrective to pervasive myths about what is often referred to as the “first Thanksgiving.”
Contextualizing them within a Native perspective, Newell (Passamaquoddy) touches on the all-too-familiar elements of the U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving and its origins and the history of English colonization in the territory now known as New England. In addition to the voyage and landfall of the Mayflower, readers learn about the Doctrine of Discovery that arrogated the lands of non-Christian peoples to European settlers; earlier encounters between the Indigenous peoples of the region and Europeans; and the Great Dying of 1616-1619, which emptied the village of Patuxet by 1620. Short, two- to six-page chapters alternate between the story of the English settlers and exploring the complex political makeup of the region and the culture, agriculture, and technology of the Wampanoag—all before covering the evolution of the holiday. Refreshingly, the lens Newell offers is a Native one, describing how the Wampanoag and other Native peoples received the English rather than the other way around. Key words ranging from estuary to discover are printed in boldface in the narrative and defined in a closing glossary. Nelson (a member of the Leech Lake Band of Minnesota Chippewa) contributes soft line-and-color illustrations of the proceedings. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Essential. (Nonfiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-72637-4
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Scholastic Nonfiction
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
Categories: CHILDREN'S HISTORY | CHILDREN'S HOLIDAYS & CELEBRATIONS
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A girl’s birthdays mark parallel tragedies for her broken family unit.
Last year’s celebration at a restaurant ended in an unexplained public shooting, and Nora’s mother died. She and her father are still wrestling with their trauma, Nora with a confirmed diagnosis of PTSD. For this year’s outing, Nora and her father head into the deserts of the Southwest on a rock-climbing expedition. They descend into a 40-foot deep slot canyon, then hike along inside until a flash flood barrels through the canyon, washing away all their supplies…and Nora’s father. She’s left to survive this symbolic and living nightmare on her own. Thankfully, she can make continuous use of her parents’ thorough training in desert knowledge. Brief sections of prose bracket the meat of the story, which is in verse, a choice highly effective in setting tone and emotional resonance for the heightened situation. Bowling’s poems run a gamut of forms, transforming the literal shape of the text just as the canyon walls surrounding Nora shape her trek. The voice of Nora’s therapist breaks through occasionally, providing a counterpoint perspective. Nora is White while two characters seen in memories have brown skin. The narrative also names local Native peoples. Elements of the survival story and psychological thriller combine with strong symbolism to weave a winding, focused, stunning narrative ultimately about the search for healing.
An edge-of-your-seat read. (Adventure. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-316-49469-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
Categories: CHILDREN'S FAMILY | CHILDREN'S POETRY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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