Schroeder chronicles eight high-profile criminals or crimes, mostly highbrow, a couple low-down and dirty.
It is difficult to think of these thieves as bad guys, so cunning and audacious were the crimes. A few are full of brio and dash, from the theft of the Mona Lisa to the parachuting hijacker D.B. Cooper, and a couple are solidly in the suave-sophisticated vein, like Willie Sutton and second-story man Arthur Barry. Others are just all business, like the Laguna Niguel heist or England’s Great Train Robbery, or sheer thuggery: Victor Desmarais and Leo Martial’s Canadian robbery fiasco. Schroeder provides enough detail to get readers involved in more than a sensationalist manner, even delving into some strange psychological consequences of a life in thievery, and Simard sprinkles the action with mostly minimalist panels, all in shades of gray, but with a fun geometrical stylization. The narratives are light, yet full of the devilish details that often sink the best-laid plans, but not frivolous or unaware of their larger context. These are crimes, after all, and hardly of the Robin Hood variety: Barry may have targeted the rich, but the poor didn’t benefit. Plus, almost always, guns were involved. Even Sutton, the most benign of highwaymen, quipped, “You can’t rob a bank on charm and personality.”
Our fascination with outlaws lives on in this selection of cleverboots and artful dodgers. (bibliography, index, further reading) (Nonfiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55451-441-0
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
Categories: CHILDREN'S HISTORY
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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. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S HISTORY | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A custom-built, bulletproof limo links two historical figures who were pre-eminent in more or less different spheres.
Garland admits that a claim that FDR was driven to Congress to deliver his “Day of Infamy” speech in a car that once belonged to Capone rests on shaky evidence. He nonetheless uses the anecdote as a launchpad for twin portraits of contemporaries who occupy unique niches in this country’s history but had little in common. Both were smart, ambitious New Yorkers and were young when their fathers died, but they definitely “headed in opposite directions.” As he fills his biographical sketches with standard-issue facts and has disappointingly little to say about the car itself (which was commissioned by Capone in 1928 and still survives), this outing seems largely intended to be a vehicle for the dark, heavy illustrations. These are done in muted hues with densely scratched surfaces and angled so that the two men, the period backgrounds against which they are posed, and the car have monumental looks. It’s a reach to bill this, as the author does, a “story about America,” but it does at least offer a study in contrasts featuring two of America’s most renowned citizens. Most of the human figures are white in the art, but some group scenes include a few with darker skin.
The car gets shortchanged, but comparing the divergent career paths of its (putative) two riders may give readers food for thought. (timeline, bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 10-12)Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-88448-620-6
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Tilbury House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CHILDREN'S HISTORY
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