Category: History

Your Legacy

A Bold Reclaiming of Our Enslaved History

Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2021. 44 pages.
Review written November 17, 2021, from a library book
Starred Review

Your Legacy is a lavishly illustrated picture book for African American children. The book reframes the story of their enslaved ancestors as one of resilience and powerfully overcoming hardship with love. And what a legitimate reframing!

The qualities of those ancestors specifically pointed out are love, intellect, courage, determination, brilliance, strength, ingenuity, grace, and dignity. Then more modern-day examples of African Americans who demonstrated these qualities are portrayed.

I thought this was such a beautiful way to look at the past.

I love the point that they didn’t all speak the same language and coming up with a way to communicate showed great ingenuity. Here’s some of that part:

When they finally landed in the Americas, they were surrounded by people from other African countries and Caribbean Islands. All of these people were now called slaves.

Your ancestors were immediately separated from one another and given new names. They were put into groups with other enslaved people, who all spoke different languages. They were forced to do grueling work.

Although they were strangers, they chose to LOVE and protect one another as family.

They needed to find a way to communicate with one another. It was their INTELLECT that allowed them to combine all the languages they spoke to create a new one, called Pidgin.

They also found a new language they could share . . . MUSIC.

That’s one part of the reframing. The whole book beautifully shows the strong spirit of people who got through adversity and passed on beautiful qualities to their descendants.

If you have African American children, this is a book to own and treasure and read with them again and again. But all children will benefit from at least reading this beautiful story.

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but 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.

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*Note* To try to catch up on posting reviews, I’m posting the oldest reviews I’ve written on my blog without making a page on my main website. They’re still good books.

Mother Jones and Her Army of Mill Children

by Jonah Winter
illustrated by Nancy Carpenter

Schwartz & Wade Books, 2020. 36 pages.
Review written February 27, 2020, from a library book
Starred Review

The topic of this picture book biography stirred me up besides telling me about someone I hadn’t known much about. Mother Jones – Mary Harris Jones – was the “grandmother of all agitators.” She spoke out strongly against oppressive labor conditions, and especially about child labor. The title and the focus of the book are about a Children’s March where she led mill children on a protest march from Philadelphia to New York City in 1903, which she called the Children’s Crusade.

The book is written in first person from Mother Jones’ perspective. Quotes from her speeches are used in a few places, and famous quotes are included on the endpapers. All caps are used in places to convey her anger at injustice.

Well, I’ve seen lots of things to get RILED UP about, but the worst thing I ever saw was in the fabric mills of Philadelphia. I saw children YOUR AGE – nine and ten years old – who worked like grown-ups, forced to stand on their feet for TEN HOURS STRAIGHT, tying threads to spinning spools, reaching their hands inside the dangerous machines that make the fabric, sometimes getting skirts caught, sometimes getting hair caught, sometimes hands or legs, working for hours and hours, never resting, breathing deadly dust – robbed of their childhoods, robbed of their dreams, and all for a measly TWO CENTS AN HOUR, while outside the birds sang and the blue sky shone.

The majority of the book is about the Children’s March. They didn’t stop at New York City, but marched on to the summer home of President Theodore Roosevelt on Long Island – where he refused to see them.

But the actions of Mother Jones ended up resulting in child labor laws that are still in effect today.

I liked that the artist used a dark palette for this book, with sobering pictures of the kids – as well as happier pictures, such as when the kids tried out the rides on Coney Island.

This book gives an important story, and I’m glad I learned about it. It’s told in a way that kids can appreciate a woman – and children – who made a big difference.

nancycarpenter.website
rhcbooks.com

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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.

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*Note* To try to catch up on posting reviews, I’m posting the oldest reviews I’ve written on my blog without making a page on my main website. They’re still good books.

Lizzie Demands a Seat!

Elizabeth Jennings Fights for Streetcar Rights

by Beth Anderson
illustrated by E. B. Lewis

Calkins Creek (Boyds Mills & Kane), 2020. 32 pages.
Review written April 22, 2020, from a library book
Starred Review

We’ve all heard of Rosa Parks, but in this book I learned about Lizzie Jennings, a free black woman who fought in court for her right to ride on streetcars with whites in New York State in 1854.

This picture book dramatizes her encounter. She was physically thrown off a streetcar on her way to church, but got right back on.

Five blocks later, the conductor hailed an officer.

Again a crowd gathered and watched in silence.

“Officer,” said the conductor, “the passengers object to this woman’s presence. It’s my duty to remove her.”

“No one objected!” Lizzie said, leaping up. “I have rights!”

The officer forced her off the streetcar. “Make your complaint. You’ll not get far.

Lizzie did go to court about it, with her whole community behind her. Her lawyer was Chester Arthur – who later became President of the United States.

The whole story is dramatic and inspiring. I’d had no idea that African Americans also had to fight for rights in the North – of course that shows my ignorance. It’s always good to read about someone standing up for what’s right. And especially good when they win rights for others as well.

The book is beautifully illustrated, with a nice variety of scenes pictured and a focus on faces. I’m glad this story is being told.

bethandersonwriter.com
eblewis.com

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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 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?

*Note* To try to catch up on posting reviews, I’m posting the oldest reviews I’ve written on my blog without making a page on my main website. They’re still good books.

The Enigma Girls

How Ten Teenagers Broke Ciphers, Kept Secrets, and Helped Win World War II

by Candace Fleming

Scholastic Focus, 2024. 371 pages.
Review written April 29, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review

We’ve all heard stories about Alan Turing breaking the Enigma code in World War II, right? But did you know that literally thousands of girls under the age of 21 were also involved in monitoring enemy communications during World War II?

In this book, the title tells us that we’re tracking ten of those teenage girls, but honestly my one quibble with the book was that I couldn’t keep them straight at all. She was still introducing new characters toward the end of the book. But what made the book amazing despite that was the picture it gave of code breaking and intelligence gathering as the war progressed and what a large operation it grew to be, and how important. And taking the perspective of teenage girls who worked in this field brings home how many ordinary people were caught up in the effort.

The book progresses chronologically. It sounds like early on, they’d figured out how Enigma worked. Every day the settings changed, so every day they’d work on breaking the code. Once the code was broken, the cryptographers moved on to something else, and they had machines where girls would type in the messages with the new settings, and decoded messages would come out.

Then later in the war, they used giant computers that were programmed by connecting and disconnecting actual wires. In another department they’d figure out the settings, then they had the girls set up and run the machine. Another department translated messages from German and Italian. Another department indexed the messages on 3×5 cards to be able to understand the messages better. Other girls were hired to check radio frequencies and listen for messages and transcribe what they heard. According to a chart, by the end of the war, 2,237 men and 6,758 women worked at Bletchley Park, and most of those women were under 21 years old.

This book makes all of that fascinating. I liked the short chapters with lots of photographs. Yes, it was hard to keep track of so many characters, but it did give the idea that many young women were working there, doing many different jobs. And they worked in total secrecy, unable to tell their family and friends what important war work they were doing. I was impressed that the Germans never knew that their codes had been broken, and the valuable intelligence gathered definitely helped win the war. I now very much want to visit the Bletchley Park Museum some day.

This book is written for kids ages 8 through 12, and I think older kids (and adults like me) will be intrigued by this story of ordinary young women using their talents to win a war.

candacefleming.com
scholastic.com/ScholasticFocus

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

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but 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.

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The First Dinosaur

How Science Solved the Greatest Mystery on Earth

by Ian Lendler

Margaret K. McElderry Books (Simon & Schuster), 2019. 220 pages.
Review written May 29, 2020, from a library book
Starred Review

The First Dinosaur told all about the discovery and study of dinosaurs – how scientists finally figured out that giant creatures like nothing they’d ever seen before even existed. I had no idea the large number of people and long sequence of discoveries it took.

The main part of the book begins in 1676 in Oxfordshire, England, when a man named Dr. Plot discovered a large fossilized bone.

Humans have been wondering over fossils for thousands of years, but the reason this book starts with this particular fossil is because of what Dr. Plot did next.

He examined it closely. He measured and described it in detail (weight, size, composition). He even illustrated it . . . and then he recorded all this information in a book.

Plot may not have understood fossils, but because of this record we are able to look back and identify what it truly was – the thighbone of a megalosaur.

Plot had created the first scientific illustration and description of a dinosaur bone.

He didn’t come up with this idea on his own. It was one of the fundamental techniques of a new method of thinking that was spreading all over Europe at the time. Its name was Science, and it was the key to unraveling the mystery of “the formed stones.”

The book continues from there, talking about how fossil collections became popular, and eventually museums. Then people began to look more closely at these fossils they discovered. But through it all, a big obstacle was the idea that creatures might have lived long ago that are not alive on earth today.

There were many colorful figures involved in the new science of geology and eventually in paleontology. I like the story of William Buckland looking after a hyena to discover that they tore apart bones exactly the way that bones in a cave were torn apart – and their poo is shaped the same way as some strange rocks in the same cave.

I was surprised how many people it took to finally realize these bones belonged to a species not identified before, and to give them the name dinosaurs — and that was as recent as 1842.

The book finishes up by showing how dinosaurs captured the popular imagination with the Crystal Palace Exhibition and giant dinosaur replicas created by Waterhouse Hawkins.

This fascinating book gives a window into how science works and how sometimes visionaries have to think beyond what they’ve been taught. It also gives credit to those who changed their minds when the evidence showed them they were wrong.

simonandschuster.com/kids

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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 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?

*Note* To try to catch up on posting reviews, I’m posting the oldest reviews I’ve written on my blog without making a page on my main website. They’re still good books.