Bravery, compassion, and initiative go hand in hand in these concise, compelling stories.
Two dozen true stories encourage readers to choose kindness.
A brief discussion of the science of kindness, which touches on neurotransmitters and hormones, is followed by moving vignettes of real people responsible for extraordinary—or everyday but no less admirable—acts of goodwill. Some figures, like Harriet Tubman, will likely be familiar. Many others may be lesser known: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, who, in 1906 Germany, explained that love between two men should be just as accepted as that between a man and a woman. Sometimes, kindness determines the course of a life, as with Henri Durant, a Swiss merchant whose ideas helped launch the International Red Cross and Red Crescent movement; other examples focus on a single moment, such as a German fighter pilot’s refusing to shoot down an enemy pilot in World War II. The kindness of ordinary people is celebrated, like that of the residents of Gander, Canada, who hosted passengers from planes grounded in the wake of 9/11, or the volunteers all over the world who provided help in the wake of a tsunami, earthquake, and nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, Japan. Each chapter is followed by three thought-provoking questions, potential discussion catalysts. A quick look at “kindness stars,” like scholar and poet Rumi and philosopher Martha Nussbaum, closes out the book. The profiles are well crafted with intriguing, often inspiring details. Realistic full-color illustrations add to the appeal.
Bravery, compassion, and initiative go hand in hand in these concise, compelling stories. (glossary, references, index) (Nonfiction. 9-12)Pub Date: June 27, 2023
ISBN: 9780500653104
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care.
In 1977, the oil carrier Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil into a formerly pristine Alaskan ocean inlet, killing millions of birds, animals, and fish. Despite a cleanup, crude oil is still there.
The Winters foretold the destructive powers of the atomic bomb allusively in The Secret Project (2017), leaving the actuality to the backmatter. They make no such accommodations to young audiences in this disturbing book. From the dark front cover, on which oily blobs conceal a seabird, to the rescuer’s sad face on the back, the mother-son team emphasizes the disaster. A relatively easy-to-read and poetically heightened text introduces the situation. Oil is pumped from the Earth “all day long, all night long, / day after day, year after year” in “what had been unspoiled land, home to Native people // and thousands of caribou.” The scale of extraction is huge: There’s “a giant pipeline” leading to “enormous ships.” Then, crash. Rivers of oil gush out over three full-bleed wordless pages. Subsequent scenes show rocks, seabirds, and sea otters covered with oil. Finally, 30 years later, animals have returned to a cheerful scene. “But if you lift a rock… // oil / seeps / up.” For an adult reader, this is heartbreaking. How much more difficult might this be for an animal-loving child?
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care. (author’s note, further reading) (Informational picture book. 9-12)Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3077-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
Bial (A Handful of Dirt, p. 299, etc.) conjures up ghostly images of the Wild West with atmospheric photos of weathered clapboard and a tally of evocative names: Tombstone, Deadwood, Goldfield, Progress, Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickock, the OK Corral. Tracing the life cycle of the estimated 30,000 ghost towns (nearly 1300 in Utah alone), he captures some echo of their bustling, rough-and-tumble past with passages from contemporary observers like Mark Twain: “If a man wanted a fight on his hands without any annoying delay, all he had to do was appear in public in a white shirt or stove-pipe hat, and he would be accommodated.” Among shots of run-down mining works, dusty, deserted streets, and dark eaves silhouetted against evening skies, Bial intersperses 19th-century photos and prints for contrast, plus an occasional portrait of a grizzled modern resident. He suggests another sort of resident too: “At night that plaintive hoo-hoo may be an owl nesting in a nearby saguaro cactus—or the moaning of a restless ghost up in the graveyard.” Children seeking a sense of this partly mythic time and place in American history, or just a delicious shiver, will linger over his tribute. (bibliography) (Nonfiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-618-06557-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2001
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