Bartoletti has added a nuanced tale to the Dear America series with this diary of a 14-year-old from Sadowka, Poland,1896. Annetka lives with her beloved grandmother and small brother; her mother is dead, and her father has gone to Pennsylvania to work in the anthracite mines. She loves the place where she is, but all that changes when her father says she will come to America to be a bride for one of his coworkers. Annetka goes, in the company of a rakish young fellow named Leon who gets her and her brother out of the country. Annetka’s diary continues through the backbreaking labor of the coal miner’s wife, for she discovers her new husband is a widower with three small children. The struggles of laundry, cooking, baking, and making ends meet in Lattimer, Pennsylvania are clearly delineated, along with Annetka’s joy in beekeeping, in making scented oils, and in coaxing her three small stepchildren to love her. Leon and others urge the workers to strike as they fight not only the filthy and dangerous mines but also the vilification of those who call them foreigners and worse. The story culminates in the Lattimer massacre of September 10, 1897 where unarmed workers were fired upon and at least 19 died. The whole is full of Annetka’s spirit, her vivid use of language in snatches of her native Polish as well as her wonderful English metaphors, like kisses “to stick her feet to the floor.” (glossary, historical photographs, maps, recipe) (Historical fiction. 9-14)
Pub Date: April 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-439-05386-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
Deftly written and informative; a call for vigilance and equality.
An examination of the history of Chinese American experiences.
Blackburn opens with a note to readers about growing up feeling invisible as a multicultural, biracial Chinese American. She notes the tremendous diversity of Chinese American history and writes that this book is a starting point for learning more. The evenly paced narrative starts with the earliest recorded arrival of the Chinese in America in 1834. A teenage girl, whose real name is unknown, arrived in New York Harbor with the Carnes brothers, merchants who imported Chinese goods and put her on display “like an animal in a circus.” The author then examines shifting laws, U.S. and global political and economic climates, and changing societal attitudes. The book introduces the highlighted people—including Yee Ah Tye, Wong Kim Ark, Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, and Vincent Chen—in relation to lawsuits or other transformative events; they also stand as examples for explaining concepts such as racial hierarchy and the model minority myth. Maps, photos, and documents are interspersed throughout. Chapters close with questions that encourage readers to think critically about systems of oppression, actively engage with the material, and draw connections to their own lives. Although the book covers a wide span of history, from the Gold Rush to the rise in anti-Asian hate during the Covid-19 pandemic, it thoroughly explains the various events. Blackburn doesn’t shy away from describing terrible setbacks, but she balances them with examples of solidarity and progress.
Deftly written and informative; a call for vigilance and equality. (resources, bibliography, image credits) (Nonfiction. 10-14)Pub Date: March 26, 2024
ISBN: 9780593567630
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care.
In 1977, the oil carrier Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil into a formerly pristine Alaskan ocean inlet, killing millions of birds, animals, and fish. Despite a cleanup, crude oil is still there.
The Winters foretold the destructive powers of the atomic bomb allusively in The Secret Project (2017), leaving the actuality to the backmatter. They make no such accommodations to young audiences in this disturbing book. From the dark front cover, on which oily blobs conceal a seabird, to the rescuer’s sad face on the back, the mother-son team emphasizes the disaster. A relatively easy-to-read and poetically heightened text introduces the situation. Oil is pumped from the Earth “all day long, all night long, / day after day, year after year” in “what had been unspoiled land, home to Native people // and thousands of caribou.” The scale of extraction is huge: There’s “a giant pipeline” leading to “enormous ships.” Then, crash. Rivers of oil gush out over three full-bleed wordless pages. Subsequent scenes show rocks, seabirds, and sea otters covered with oil. Finally, 30 years later, animals have returned to a cheerful scene. “But if you lift a rock… // oil / seeps / up.” For an adult reader, this is heartbreaking. How much more difficult might this be for an animal-loving child?
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care. (author’s note, further reading) (Informational picture book. 9-12)Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3077-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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