Riding the steady tide of British “lest we forget” war memorials, this reconstructed version of an actual Tommy’s experiences in the trenches pairs a partly epistolary text to Haywood’s sketchy, subdued watercolors free of strong emotions, shocking details or, except for a few pale spots in one scene, blood. Eager to “get a crack at the Kaiser,” Sydney enlists at 15 and finds it all a bit of a lark—until the trenches fill with rainwater, comrades lose legs or lives, the rats and lice proliferate and, at last, fatal word comes to go “over the top.” In a final irony, Sydney’s unknowing father, also a soldier, writes on the last page of his joy at the prospect of coming home to wife and son. American audiences may not be as responsive to this poignant commemoration, but it makes a sobering reminder, next to the likes of Michael Foreman’s War Game (1994) or (set in a subsequent world war) Mick Manning and Brita Grandström’s Tail-End Charlie (2009), that many young people never did come back. There is an afterword, but much of it is under the jacket flap. (Picture book. 8-10)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-84507-528-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PLB 0-531-33140-7 Ketcham’s first book is based on an allegedly true story of a childhood incident in the life of Johann Sebastian Bach. It starts with a couple of pages regaling the Bach home and all the Johanns in the family, who made their fame through music. After his father’s death, Johann Sebastian goes to live with his brother, Johann Christoph, where he boasts that he is the best organist in the world. Johann Christoph contradicts him: “Old Adam Reincken is the best.” So Johann Sebastian sets out to hear the master himself. In fact, he is humbled to tears, but there is hope that he will be the world’s best organist one day. Johann Sebastian emerges as little more than a brat, Reincken as more of a suggestion than a character. Bush’s illustrations are most transporting when offering details of the landscape, but his protagonist is too impish to give the story much authority. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-531-30140-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Orchard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
Adler (also with Widener, Lou Gehrig, 1997, etc.) sets his fictional story during the week of July 14, 1932, in the Bronx, when the news items that figure in this tale happened. A boy gets a dime for his birthday, instead of the bicycle he longs for, because it is the Great Depression, and everyone who lives in his neighborhood is poor. While helping his friend Jacob sell newspapers, he discovers that his own father, who leaves the house with a briefcase each day, is selling apples on Webster Avenue along with the other unemployed folk. Jacob takes the narrator to Yankee Stadium with the papers, and people don’t want to hear about the Coney Island fire or the boy who stole so he could get something to eat in jail. They want to hear about Babe Ruth and his 25th homer. As days pass, the narrator keeps selling papers, until the astonishing day when Ruth himself buys a paper from the boy with a five-dollar bill and tells him to keep the change. The acrylic paintings bask in the glow of a storied time, where even row houses and the elevated train have a warm, solid presence. The stadium and Webster Avenue are monuments of memory rather than reality in a style that echoes Thomas Hart Benton’s strong color and exaggerated figures. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-15-201378-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
