RADIO RESCUE

In this admiring memoir of her father as a young ham radio operator in New York City during the 1920s, Barasch pulls readers into the initiate world of Morse code and early intercontinental communications. Not many children bitten by the radio bug went on to get their amateur operator’s license, but Barasch’s father did. She charts his progress—and illustrates it with finely descriptive pen-and-wash artwork—of drumming the dots and dashes into his subconscious, memorizing international code words, then taking the test. He becomes the chum of another, local operator, an older boy who takes the younger under his wing and regales him with a story of how he figured in the rescue of a mother and child when a neighboring apartment house took fire. Together they build a station for Barasch’s father, where he lets rip his first code and ultimately stars in his own slice of heroism when he passes along vital information as a hurricane pounds distant Florida. Barasch does an impressive job here. Through her warm, transporting watercolors and her stout text, she manages to turn the world of dots and dashes—hardly the obvious stuff of a compelling narrative—into a tour of a time and an enthusiasm worth taking again and again. (Picture book. 5-9)