A detailed biography of a Jamaican woman who nursed soldiers in battle during the Crimean War.
Born in 1805 to a Creole (mixed-race) mother and a Scottish father, Seacole spent her childhood studying her mother’s medicinal practices and relishing her father’s war stories, hoping to one day travel herself. Her life became a combination of both. After her husband and mother died, Seacole took charge of the boardinghouse her mother left behind. When soldiers arrived sick with cholera, she would nurse them. Wherever she went, her medical knowledge was needed: an outbreak of cholera in Panama when she visited her brother; yellow fever outbreaks in Kingston. Finally, she went to London to volunteer as an army nurse in the Crimean War (the basics of the war are described for context). She was turned away due to her color, but she packed her treatments and headed to Turkey on her own. Florence Nightingale turned her away too, but Seacole knew her services were needed, and she went elsewhere, ultimately spending years treating soldiers on the battlefield. She became famous when a British war journalist praised her, and she eventually wrote a book about her experiences—but she returned to England in debt. Her service was at last acknowledged and her finances saved by contributions made by the English people and the crown. This slim book features full-page, color illustrations throughout, and the text quotes Seacole’s memoir to give the narrative the flavor of her era, personality, and experiences. It is a riveting story that deserves attention.
Both biography and subject are unique and inspiring. (source notes, bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7636-7994-1
Page Count: 49
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
Categories: CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
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To Esther Rudomin at eleven Siberia meant the metaphor: isolation, criminals and cruel punishment, snow and wolves; but even in Siberia there is satisfaction from making a friend of a prickly classmate, from seeing a Deanna Durbin movie four times, from earning and studying and eventually belonging.
Especially in Siberia, where not wolves but hunger and dirt and cold are endemic, where shabbiness and overcrowding are taken for granted, where unselfishness is exceptional. At the heart of Mrs. Hautzig's memoir of four years as a Polish deportee in Russia during World War II is not only hardihood and adaptability but uniquely a girl like any other. Abruptly seized in their comfortable home in Vilna, Esther and her family, are shipped in cattle cars to Rubtsovsk in the Altai Territory, work as slave laborers in a gypsum mine until amnesty, then are "permitted" lobs and lodging in the village--if someone will take them in. After sleeping on the floor, a wooden platform is very welcome; after sharing a room with two other families, a separate dung hut seems a homestead. Then Esther goes to school, the greatest boon, and, to her mother's horror, wants to be like the Siberians....Deprivation does not make Esther grim: the saddest day of her life is her father's departure for a labor brigade at the front, her sharpest bitterness is for the bland viciousness of individuals.
Involving from "the end of my lovely world" to the end of exile (when the Rudomins, as Jews, were jeered in Poland), this is a beautiful book with no bar to wide acceptance (and a rich non-juvenile jacket by Nonny Hogrogian). (Memoir. 8-12)Pub Date: April 15, 1968
ISBN: 978-0-06-447027-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: T.Y. Crowell
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1968
Categories: CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
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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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