Review of Thomas Jefferson Grows a Nation, by Peggy Thomas and Stacy Innerst

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, History 0

thomas_jefferson_grows_a_nation_largeThomas Jefferson Grows a Nation

by Peggy Thomas
illustrations by Stacy Innerst

Calkins Creek (Highlights), Honesdale, Pennsylvania, 2015.

I expected this picture book to be about Thomas Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase. Yes, that’s included. But what I didn’t expect was all the information about Thomas Jefferson as a farmer and as a scientist studying agriculture.

There’s an amazing and amusing extended story right toward the beginning. Thomas Jefferson got into a sort of competition with a French naturalist, Count Buffon, who wrote a book claiming that America’s very wildlife showed it to be an inferior continent.

The wildlife was inferior, he said. “Shrivelled.” “Diminished.” Sheep were “meagre, and their flesh less juicy.” A jaguar was no bigger than a beagle, and dogs were “mute.” The New World, he argued, had nothing as grand as an elephant, and the weather produced an infestation of lowly reptiles and insects.

Thomas Jefferson worked hard to set the record straight. He even had a moose carcass shipped to him in France!

The book also covers Jefferson’s many experiments with different plants for farming, and his study of invasive pests. He practiced crop rotation and was interested in the science of farming. He even won a gold medal from the French Society of Agriculture for a device that improved plows.

When he was President and responsible for the Louisiana Purchase, it was only natural that he was also behind Lewis and Clark’s expedition, cataloguing the plants and animals of the new territory.

This is a nontraditional look at Thomas Jefferson, and made all the more interesting with the illustrations. Although it’s a picture book, there is plenty of text on each page, more suitable for upper elementary school readers. A fascinating presentation of the life of someone I thought I already knew about.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/Thomas_jefferson_grows_a_nation.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Tiny Stitches, by Gwendolyn Hooks, illustrated by Colin Bootman

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Starred Review 0

tiny_stitches_largeTiny Stitches

The Life of Medical Pioneer Vivien Thomas

by Gwendolyn Hooks
illustrated by Colin Bootman

Lee & Low Books, New York, 2016. 32 pages.
Starred Review

Tiny Stitches is the story of Vivien Thomas, the African-American medical researcher who developed the surgical procedure that saved the life of blue babies during the days of segregation and despite overwhelming prejudice.

Vivien always wanted to be a doctor. He saved money for medical school even as a child working with his father as a carpenter. But they lost all their savings in the Great Depression.

It wasn’t through going to medical school that Vivien got his opportunity. He interviewed for a job with medical researcher Dr. Alfred Blalock, and impressed him with his knowledge and intelligent questions. He got a job assisting Dr. Blalock, who gave him more and more research of his own.

Vivien’s surgical techniques improved with each operation. Just as he had learned to fit pieces of wood together seamlessly, Vivien learned to suture, or sew, blood vessels together seamlessly. Dr. Blalock was impressed by Vivien’s tiny stitches. Sometimes Vivien assisted Dr. Blalock with an experiment. On other days, Dr. Blalock assisted Vivien.

Vivien was happy working as a researcher, until he learned that his official job description was janitor. White men with the same duties and skills as Vivien were called research technicians and earned more money. Vivien was insulted. He was not a janitor. He told Dr. Blalock that he would not continue working unless he was paid the same as the other technicians. A few days later, Vivien noticed his paycheck was much better. He now earned about the same as the white technicians.

In 1941, Dr. Blalock became Chief of Surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. He took Vivien Thomas with him, where Vivien faced even more discrimination.

In 1943, Dr. Helen Taussig approached them with the problem of blue babies – babies born with a heart defect so that their blood didn’t get enough oxygen, and they died. Dr. Blalock assigned Vivien to research a method for operating on the babies.

Vivien had to develop new needles small enough to use on babies, and he tried the procedure out on animals. Dr. Blalock assisted Vivien only once during his experiments.

On November 29, 1944, Dr. Blalock tried the procedure Vivien had developed on a blue baby patient named Eileen. Dr. Blalock asked Vivien to stand on a stool behind him and guide him through the operation.

After that operation and others (also assisted by Vivien) were successful, Dr. Blalock and Dr. Taussig were highly acclaimed.

As news spread of Dr. Blalock’s success, two or three operations a week soon became two or three operations a day. Patients came from as far away as Europe to have the procedure. Vivien remained standing on the stool behind Dr. Blalock, coaching him through more than one hundred fifty operations.

The last double-page spread has a picture of Vivien in full academic regalia up on stage.

Vivien Thomas was not publicly acknowledged for his brilliant research and surgical talents until more than twenty-six years after the first blue baby operation. On February 27, 1971, the Old Hands Club, a group of doctors who had trained under Vivien, presented a formal portrait of him to Johns Hopkins Hospital. It is displayed across from Dr. Blalock’s portrait. In 1976, Johns Hopkins University awarded Vivien an honorary doctorate degree and appointed him to the faculty as Instructor of Surgery.

Although he never had the chance to attend medical school, Vivien’s research pioneered open-heart surgery on children. Today about forty thousand children are born each year with heart problems. Because of Vivien Thomas, these children now have a chance to live full and healthy lives.

This book isn’t flashy. The prose tells the story without frills. The pictures show a doctor at work. There’s nothing surprising or startling here.

But the story tells about a remarkable man who did outstanding work and saved lives – even without recognition.

gwendolynhooks.com
colinbootman.net
leeandlow.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/tiny_stitches.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Watch Out for Flying Kids! by Cynthia Levinson

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Cross Cultural, History, Starred Review, True Stories 0

watch_out_for_flying_kids_largeWatch Out for Flying Kids!

How Two Circuses, Two Countries, and Nine Kids Confront Conflict and Build Community

by Cynthia Levinson

Peachtree, Atlanta, 2015. 216 pages.
Starred Review

I booktalked this book in local elementary schools this year. It’s a story about real kids, with a large format and lots of pictures — and everything in it is true.

A section of the Prologue neatly explains why this is an important book:

Watch Out for Flying Kids spotlights a little-known corner of this universe: youth social circus.

As the first word of the name suggests, “youth circus” refers to programs in which the performers are children. The nine performers featured in this book are teenagers.

The word “social” refers to the mission of bringing together young people who would not ordinarily meet — or, if they did, might fear or oppose each other. The two organizations portrayed in this book — the St. Louis Arches and the Galilee Circus — bring together young people from vastly different backgrounds and cultures through training in circus arts. The goal of both groups is to replace fear with respect and opposition with trust, changing the world one acrobat, contortionist, and flyer at a time.

Why wouldn’t these kids meet if it weren’t for circus? Why might they even fear or mistrust one another? The three white and two black troupers who are Arches live in different neighborhoods and go to different schools in St. Louis, Missouri, a city that is segregated by race and income level. The two Arabs and two Jews who perform with the Galilee Circus in northern Israel live in towns segregated by religion, ethnicity, language, and history. They represent groups that have been violently at odds with each other for hundreds of years.

Watch Out for Flying Kids shows what happens when all of them get together. That is, it demonstrates how they learn to juggle their responsibilities, fly above the fray, balance schoolwork and circus work, unicycle circles around people who doubt them, tumble gracefully through life — even when injured — and walk the tightrope of politics and friendship.

This book looks at the two circuses, the St. Louis Arches and the Galilee Circus, over the years 2005 to 2014. Nine kids in particular are highlighted and their journey described.

Performing in a circus is tremendously difficult, and the hard work and dedication required is conveyed well. The two circuses got to visit each other’s countries and perform together, and the book also shows us the challenges of working together across cultures.

This is a wonderful, inspiring and informative book about a group of kids working hard, forming a community, and putting on a great show.

cynthialevinson.com
peachtree-online.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/watch_out_for_flying_kids.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Fearless Flyer, by Heather Lang and Raúl Colón

Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Starred Review 0

fearless_flyer_largeFearless Flyer

Ruth Law and Her Flying Machine

by Heather Lang
illustrated by Raúl Colón

Calkins Creek (Highlights), Honesdale, Pennsylvania, 2016. 40 pages.
Starred Review

Did you know that in 1916, the person to set the American longest nonstop flight record was a woman? This picture book tells the story of Ruth Law, an early American aviator.

100 years ago, flying was dangerous and primitive. The pictures speak volumes, with Ruth Law bundled up in layers of coats with only her feet protected from the elements, steering the plane using two levers. She navigated with a little scrolling six-inch map she strapped into her lap. She had to hold the right lever with her knee while she turned the knobs on the map box.

Early on, the book explains why Ruth Law was so successful:

Few aviators dared to fly cross-country in their flimsy flying machines. If an engine had trouble, by the time the aviator realized it, there was often nowhere to land.

Ruth had a secret weapon. She knew every nut and bolt on her machine.

“I could anticipate what would happen to the motor by the sound of it.”

The text in this book is straightforward, interspersed with quotes from Ruth. The story is of her plan to fly from Chicago to New York City and to show that what men can do, a woman can do.

Raúl Colón’s beautiful pictures evoke the time period beautifully. By seeing pictures, you realize just how early in the history of aviation were Ruth’s adventures. Her record-breaking flight happened in November 1916.

She didn’t have a radio or any instruments but a compass. She didn’t even have a cockpit. With two levers and a map box perched on a rickety-looking set of wings, Ruth Law broke the boundaries of what could be done.

“The sky was my limit and the horizon my sphere. It’s any woman’s sphere if she has nerve and courage and faith in herself. She’s got to have faith in herself.”

I expect this picture book will inspire more girls and boys to take to the sky.

heatherlangbooks.com
boydsmillspress.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/fearless_flyer.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Two Friends, by Dean Robbins

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Picture Book Review 0

two_friends_largeTwo Friends

Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass

by Dean Robbins
illustrated by Sean Qualls & Selina Alko

Orchard Books (Scholastic), New York, 2016. 32 pages.

Here’s a simple picture book telling a story from history about Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass. The two were friends and both lived in Rochester, New York. There’s a statue there showing the two of them having tea. This picture book dramatizes one such occasion, mostly using it as an opportunity to talk about both of their lives and how similar they were.

The language is easy for children to understand:

As a girl, Susan wanted to learn what boys learned.
But teachers wouldn’t let her. . . .

Susan wanted something more.
She read about rights in the United States.
The right to live free.
The right to vote.
Some people had rights, while others had none.
Why shouldn’t she have them, too?

Susan taught herself to give speeches.
Some people liked her ideas about rights for women.
Others didn’t.

The similar language used about Frederick Douglass highlights their similarities.

Frederick grew up as a slave in the South.
Slaves had to do everything the master said, but Frederick wanted something more.
He secretly learned to read and write.
New ideas thrilled him.

Frederick read about rights in the United States.
The right to live free.
The right to vote.
Some people had rights, while others had none.
Why shouldn’t he have them, too?

Frederick escaped from his master and headed north.
He taught himself to give speeches.
Some people liked his ideas about rights for African Americans.
Others didn’t.

Beyond this, there’s basic information about how the two supported each other and were friends. And the pictures are marvelous.

A lovely introduction to the topic of equal rights for young readers.

deanrobbins.net
seanqualls.com
selinaalko.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/two_friends.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of This Bridge Will Not Be Gray, by Dave Eggers and Tucker Nichols

Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Starred Review 0

this_bridge_will_not_be_gray_largeThis Bridge Will Not Be Gray

story by Dave Eggers
art by Tucker Nichols

McSweeney’s, San Francisco, 2015. 104 pages.
Starred Review

This Bridge Will Not Be Gray is a picture book about the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s a long picture book, but otherwise fits picture book format. Every spread has a cut-paper pictorial background, and no spread has more than a few paragraphs of text, if that.

This isn’t the fancy, realistic-looking cut paper of Steve Jenkins. This is simple, with basic shapes. People are shown as heads of various colors (such as blue and green and red). But the simple style does work. Dave Eggers takes us through the design process of the Golden Gate bridge, beginning with the beautiful bay itself.

It is interesting to me that the reason the Golden Gate Bridge ended up reddish-orange in the first place was that was the color they painted onto steel when it was shipped to make it rust-proof.

They hadn’t actually decided what color to paint the bridge, but plans were to paint it gray.

When Irving Morrow was on the ferry one day, he watched this orange steel being assembled, and he had a thought. He thought that this color was beautiful.

And when Irving was asked what color he thought the bridge should be, he said, Why not leave it this color? And people said, What? And they said, Huh? And they said, Irving, you are nuts. No bridge had ever been orange. Who had ever heard of an orange bridge? No one had, because no bridge had ever been this color. This is true: no bridge in known human history had ever been orange.

And for a good portion of the human race, because something has not already been, that is a good reason to fear it coming to be.

But as the debate continued about the color of the bridge, an interesting thing happened. Other people noticed the same thing Irving had noticed: that this accidental orange somehow looked right.

That gives you an idea of the conversational style of the book. The simple graphics accompany it and add up to a lovely and informative story of how one of the most beautiful bridges in the world was built.

The Golden Gate Bridge, which is orange, is the best-known and best-loved bridge in the world.

It is best-known because it is bold and courageous and unusual and even strange. It is best-loved because it is bold and courageous and unusual and even strange. And it is all these things because Irving Morrow, and thousands of others said:

“This bridge will not be gray!”

It is especially fitting that the author, the illustrator, and the publisher live and work near the Golden Gate Bridge.

mcsweeneys.net

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/this_bridge_will_not_be_gray.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Finding Winnie, by Lindsay Mattick and Sophie Blackall

Award Winners, Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Starred Review 0

finding_winnie_largeFinding Winnie

The True Story of the World’s Most Famous Bear

by Lindsay Mattick
illustrated by Sophie Blackall

Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2015. 52 pages.
Starred Review
2016 Caldecott Medal

I didn’t think I’d review a second book about the true story of the real bear after whom Winnie-the-Pooh was named. The first one I read was complete and most delightful.

But then I read Finding Winnie and fell in love. In the first place, it’s got Sophie Blackall’s wonderful illustrations, which won me over quickly. But as well, the story is told with the frame of a mother telling the story to her son – and that son happens to be Cole, the great-great-grandson of Harry Colebourn, who bought the bear Winnie in Winnipeg on the way to World War I.

Besides giving all the facts, there’s a lilt to the storytelling and interruptions along the way by Cole, which are reminiscent of Christopher Robin’s words at the start of Winnie-the-Pooh.

Here’s where Harry sees the bear cub at a train station:

Harry thought for a long time. Then he said to himself, “There is something special about that Bear.” He felt inside his pocket and said, “I shouldn’t.” He paced back and forth and said, “I can’t.” Then his heart made up his mind, and he walked up to the trapper and said, “I’ll give you twenty dollars for the bear.”

“Is twenty dollars a lot?” asked Cole.
“Back then?” I said. “Even more than a lot.”

The photograph album at the back is especially charming. I like the picture of Harry’s diary turned to the page for August 24, 1914, where it says, “Bought bear $20.”

Of course, after Harry’s story, we hear about Christopher Robin Milne and his friendship with Winnie. But then Cole brings it back to Harry, and his mother tells him that Harry had a son named Fred, and Fred had a daughter named Laureen, and Laureen had a daughter named Lindsay.

Framing it all as a story of a mother to her child is what sends it over the edge into wonderful.

And then I had a son.

When I saw you, I thought, “There is something special about that Boy.” So I named you after your great-great-grandfather: Captain Harry Colebourn.

I named you Cole.

“That’s me?” said Cole in a whisper.

“That’s you.”

“And that’s Winnie?”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s Winnie.”

“And it’s all true?”

“Sometimes the best stories are,” I said.

Sometimes they are.

lindsaymattick.com
sophieblackall.com
lb-kids.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/finding_winnie.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of The Boys Who Challenged Hitler, by Phillip Hoose

Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Starred Review, True Stories 0

boys_who_challenged_hitler_largeThe Boys Who Challenged Hitler

Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club

by Phillip Hoose

Farrar Straus Giroux, New York, 2015. 198 pages.
Starred Review

This year because of schedule conflicts, I’m not attending Capitol Choices (a local group that chooses the 100 best books of the year for children and youth), and I’d promised myself this year I’ll just read books I want to read, not books I feel I ought to read. So I thought I wouldn’t read much children’s nonfiction. This book came in, and I thought I’d just check it back in, unread. But I started dipping into it, and found I couldn’t stop.

The story is of a group of Danish teens who didn’t like that their government had handed Denmark over to Hitler. They formed their own resistance band before any other organized resistance. They went to prison for it — and their case galvanized other Danes to act.

Phillip Hoose spoke at length with Knud Pedersen in 2012, working on this book with him before he died in 2014. How wonderful that this information was captured. Much of the book gives Knud’s voice and perspective.

Here’s a summary from the author in the Introduction, which explains why this important story had to be told. He was visiting the Museum of Danish Resistance in Copenhagen.

Then I came upon a special little exhibit entitled “The Churchill Club.” With photos, letters, cartoons, and weapons such as grenades and pistols, the exhibit told the story of a few Danish teens, schoolboys from a northern city, who got the resistance started. Mortified that Danish authorities had given up to the Germans without fighting back, these boys had waged a war of their own.

Most were ninth-graders at a school in Aalborg, in the northern part of Denmark called Jutland. Between their first meeting in December 1941 and their arrest in May 1942, the Churchill Club struck more than two dozen times, racing through the streets on bicycles in well-coordinated hits. Acts of vandalism quickly escalated to arson and major destruction of German property. The boys stole and cached German rifles, grenades, pistols, and ammunition — even a machine gun. Using explosives stolen from the school chemistry lab, they scorched a German railroad car filled with airplane wings. They carried out most of their actions in broad daylight, as they all had family curfews.

This book tells the details of their story, a fascinating one about teens deciding to act for what they believed to be right, at the risk of their own lives.

The book is engagingly written, with plenty of photographs and sidebars to break up the text. It’s targeted toward people the same age as these daring young men were at the time of their resistance.

philliphoose.com
macteenbooks.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/boys_who_challenged_hitler.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of One Plastic Bag, by Miranda Paul and Elisabeth Zunon

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, History 0

one_plastic_bag_largeOne Plastic Bag

Isatou Ceesay and the Recycling Women of Gambia

by Miranda Paul
illustrations by Elizabeth Zunon

Millbrook Press, Minneapolis, 2015. 36 pages.

In 2012, Isatou Ceesay won a World of Difference 100 Award from the International Alliance for Women for her work establishing the Njau Recycling and income Generating Group in her village in Gambia. This picture book tells her story in a way that children can understand – but which adults will also appreciate.

The book begins with Isatou as a child when a basket breaks. When a basket breaks, people could simply drop it and it would crumble and mix back with the dirt. However, then people in the village began using plastic bags. When you drop a plastic bag on the ground, it leads to a problem with trash.

Goats began to die from eating the plastic bags. There was a bad smell. Isatou and some other women gathered up plastic bags, washed them – and made plastic thread from them. Then they used this plastic thread to crochet purses. And selling the purses made money to buy a new goat – a goat that was not confronted with plastic trash it was tempted to eat.

The note at the back tells more about Isatou Ceesay’s work. I like the way the story is told simply, with beautiful collage art, and then details are given at the end for adults. This is an inspiring story of a woman making the world a better place.

oneplasticbag.com
mirandapaul.com
lizzunon.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/one_plastic_bag.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Winnie: The True Story of the Bear Who Inspired Winnie-the-Pooh, by Sally M. Walker and Jonathan D. Voss

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Starred Review 0

winnie_largeWinnie

The True Story of the Bear Who Inspired Winnie-the-Pooh

by Sally M. Walker

illustrated by Jonathan D. Voss

Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2015. 36 pages.
Starred Review

It’s books like this that make me wish we had a separate children’s browsing section for Nonfiction, rather than interfiling them with adult books. This is not a book for children looking for the subject of Bears, although that is where it is filed. This is a heart-warming picture book story that happens to be true.

I knew that the name of Winnie-the-Pooh was inspired by a bear Christopher Robin visited at the London Zoo. This book tells the story of that bear.

The bear was born in Canada during World War I. A veterinarian who took care of the horses in the Canadian army saw the bear for sale when his regiment stopped at a train station. The man said he didn’t see the cub until after he’d shot her mother, so Harry Colebourn bought the bear and named her Winnipeg, after his company’s hometown.

Winnipeg, whose name was quickly shortened to Winnie, was friendly and affectionate to the whole troop, but especially to Harry. She traveled with them to training camp in Quebec and then across the Atlantic Ocean.

But when the company was sent to the fighting in France, Harry decided that Winnie would be better off in the London Zoo, which had a new exhibit for bears. Winnie adjusted so well that four years later, when the war ended, Harry decided she should be allowed to stay.

Even though this book has a back story of war, the author and illustrator have made a very readable, light-hearted tale. They show Winnie cuddling and playing with Harry and the other soldiers. I was very surprised that the London zookeepers actually let children ride on Winnie’s back and feed her condensed milk with a spoon. It’s hard to imagine any zookeepers anywhere allowing that today, but perhaps it’s a testament to how gentle Winnie was.

And it’s fitting that the bear who inspired one of the greatest books of children’s literature should now have her own story told. Fans of Winnie-the-Pooh will love hearing the back story, but this story goes beyond that and simply tells a heart-warming story of a young man and a bear who was generous with her affection.

sallymwalker.com
jonathandvoss.com
mackids.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/winnie.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?