A child’s experience on a whaling ship in 1851 is brought to life in this fictional account based on two real whaling families’ journals and diaries. Nine-year-old Laura and her younger brother William sail with their mother and sea-captain father on an expedition to the Arctic whaling grounds. They won’t return for seven months or until the ship is filled with 2,600 barrels of whale oil. Laura writes in her diary each day, sharing with readers the routines of eating, sleeping, and learning, as well as the adventures and the hardships of living on a small whaling ship. Excitement mounts as the ship enters arctic waters. Whales are hunted and processed. When unseasonably cold weather sets, the boat is caught in the ice and the captain is forced to abandon ship before reaching his goal. Laura and family travel in a longboat until they are rescued at sea, and there, Laura ends her diary. Allen’s (Good-Bye, Charles Lindbergh, 1998, etc.) sepia ink sketches set alongside the text illustrate many objects that may be unfamiliar to the modern reader. These include a chamber pot, sailor’s knots, and a harpoon. Two-page color pencil-and-oil wash illustrations interspersed with the text give the larger context of the whaling scene. These luminous images sharpen the reader’s understanding of a bygone life. Additional information and historical background are included in an authors’ note, and a glossary is placed at the front of the book for easy reference. A good read with an interesting historical background. (Fiction. 8-10)
Pub Date: May 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-689-82222-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000
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
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