Meg Wells’s diary, the newest addition to the popular My America series, tells the story of two-and-a-half months in a St. Louis girl’s life in 1856. Meg and her little brother, Preston, live in a loving family with their parents and little sister, Grace. Life is filled with the excitement of the big city: steamboats, ice cream parlors, hoopskirts, and fancy hotels. But all is not idyllic. The family lives with ghost of the 1849 cholera epidemic, when their older siblings lost their lives. Then there is the growing tension about the role of slavery in Kansas, which is soon to become a state. If that isn’t enough, another outbreak of cholera has hit the family. Once Grace and Mrs. Wells become ill, their distraught mother trundles Meg and Preston off to what she hopes will be the safety of Kansas, where their Aunt Margaret lives. The story flows better than many epistolary novels. Meg’s voice does not stray from that of a well-educated, somewhat prim nine-year-old. Her horror and fear are appropriately innocent when she accidentally witnesses a slave auction. Meg and Preston have many adventures: the steamship runs into a sandbar and lists dangerously; the passengers rush to each meal, causing a human stampede; and they actually become part of the Underground Railroad. Large font, short passages, and interesting facts and details are packed into this earnest adventure for readers just ready for chapter books. A good companion to Deborah Hopkinson’s Pioneer Summer (p. 570). (historical note) (Fiction. 7-10)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-439-42517-4
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2002
Fact and fiction dovetail neatly in this tale of a wonderfully resolute child who finds a memorable way to convince her father that the newly-finished Brooklyn Bridge is safe to cross. Having watched the great bridge going up for most of her young life, Hannah is eager to walk it, but despite repeated, fact-laced appeals to reason (and Hannah is a positive fount of information about its materials and design), her father won’t be moved: “No little girl of mine will cross that metal monster!” Hannah finally hatches a far-fetched plan to convince him once and for all; can she persuade the renowned P.T. Barnum to march his corps of elephants across? She can, and does (actually, he was already planning to do it). Pham places Hannah, radiating sturdy confidence, within sepia-toned, exactly rendered period scenes that capture both the grandeur of the bridge in its various stages of construction, and the range of expressions on the faces of onlookers during its opening ceremonies and after. Readers will applaud Hannah’s polite persistence. (afterword, resources) (Picture book. 7-10)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-689-87011-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2004
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BOOK REVIEW
Fantasy training wheels for chapter-book readers.
Elliot’s first day of school turns out to be more than he bargained for.
Elliot Eisner—skinny and pale with curly brown hair—is a bit nervous about being the new kid. Thankfully, he hits it off with fellow new student, “punk rock”–looking Uchenna Devereaux, a black girl with twists (though they actually look like dreads in Aly’s illustrations). On a first-day field trip to New Jersey’s Pine Barrens, the pair investigates a noise in the trees. The cause? A Jersey Devil: a blue-furred, red-bellied and -winged mythical creature that looks like “a tiny dragon” with cloven hooves, like a deer’s, on its hind feet. Unwittingly, the duo bonds with the creature by feeding it, and it later follows them back to the bus. Unsurprisingly, they lose the creature (which they alternately nickname Jersey and Bonechewer), which forces them to go to their intimidating, decidedly odd teacher, Peruvian Professor Fauna, for help in recovering it. The book closes with Professor Fauna revealing the truth—he heads a secret organization committed to protecting mythical creatures—and inviting the children to join, a neat setup for what is obviously intended to be a series. The predictable plot is geared to newly independent readers who are not yet ready for the usual heft of contemporary fantasies. A brief history lesson given by a mixed-race associate of Fauna’s in which she compares herself to the American “melting pot” manages to come across as simultaneously corrective and appropriative.
Fantasy training wheels for chapter-book readers. (Fantasy. 7-10)Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7352-3170-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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