Aside from the smudgy pastel illustrations provided by Anne Sibley O’Brien, this mother-and-son effort earns high marks both for adding less-celebrated names to the pantheon of peacemongers and for noting that the nonviolent approach to civil protest doesn’t always work—which makes the courage of those who engage in it all the more exemplary. Each of the 16 chronologically arranged chapters highlights a particular event, from the Gandhi-led mass burning of Indian registration documents in 1908 Johannesburg to the worldwide anti-Iraq war protest on February 5, 2003, then closes with a set of rubrics that add detail or historical background. Along with the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr., Muhammad Ali and César Chávez, young readers will meet—and come away admiring—Vietnam’s Thich Nhat Hanh, Australian Charles Perkins and the Students For Aboriginal Action, Belfast’s Peace People, the Mothers of the Disappeared in Buenos Aires and others who understood that “nonviolence is the weapon of the strong.” Might that admiration grow into emulation in some? (annotated bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-58089-129-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2008
A blend of fact and fiction in both text and pictures add up to a resistible invitation to create coded messages by substituting Egyptian hieroglyphics for plain language. In the perfunctory plot, an archeologist acquires a mysterious, veiled helper who guides him from one simple written clue to the next, leading ultimately to an artifact that was stolen and hidden away thousands of years ago. Along the way there’s plenty of opportunity to explain ancient Egyptian writing and funerary customs, to fill page space with small photos or images of surviving or reconstructed tombs, sarcophagi, painted murals and statuary and to practice translating the aforementioned clues. The historical information is easily available elsewhere, and though the downloadable typeface on the embedded CD will make the creation of new messages much less tedious than having to draw hieroglyphics by hand, even dedicated fans of codes and ciphers aren’t likely to give this more than a quick once-over. (Fact/fiction blend. 11-13)
Pub Date: June 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-7534-6411-3
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Kingfisher
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
trike” in New York City and the fate of the sharecroppers in the southern cotton industry, the garment and coal mining industries loom as the real villains in child labor issues. Bartoletti provides numerous examples of how debilitating poverty drove entire families to work in utter squalor and suffer cruel treatment at the hands of profit-driven conglomerates. Personal stories illuminate the wretched conditions under which many of these children labored, with a focus on the instances when a child mobilized fellow workers to demand their rights. The grit and determination of these children who, in the face of police abuse, bureaucratic negligence, and governmental (even presidential) indifference, banded together for a common cause, and the startling black-and-white photographs, ensure that readers will be alternately awed and appalled by this stunning account of child labor in the US. (bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-88892-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
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