A somber, well-executed addition to the history as the incident approaches its 100th anniversary.
A once-thriving Black community was destroyed, and the story of how it happened went untold for decades.
In the beginning of the 20th century, Tulsa, Oklahoma, was emerging as a thriving oil town, and African Americans worked to establish communities in the face of discrimination. The separate neighborhoods that grew out of segregation meant that Black businesses sprang up to serve those who could not frequent White establishments. The African American neighborhood of Greenwood had so many it became known as “Black Wall Street,” with an impressive range of services and opportunities. The tenuous nature of Black prosperity was reinforced, however, when a White woman accused a Black man of assault. White mobs, unable to reach the suspect, descended on Greenwood, looting the businesses and burning the community to the ground. With no protection or assistance from law enforcement, all that the residents had achieved was lost. Further, it took 75 years before an official investigation was launched. Author Weatherford and illustrator Cooper join forces to present this important story with sensitivity and care for younger readers. Weatherford’s measured prose depicts the events in a cleareyed, age-appropriate narrative. Oklahoma native Cooper’s muted palette and oil-erasure style effectively portray first the achievement and then the devastation that followed. The author’s and illustrator’s notes provide valuable insight and context, as does the rear endpapers’ photograph of the massacre’s aftermath.
A somber, well-executed addition to the history as the incident approaches its 100th anniversary. (Informational picture book. 8-12)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5415-8120-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Carolrhoda
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
With young readers diagnosed with anxiety in ever increasing numbers, this book offers a necessary mirror to many.
Young Raina is 9 when she throws up for the first time that she remembers, due to a stomach bug. Even a year later, when she is in fifth grade, she fears getting sick.
Raina begins having regular stomachaches that keep her home from school. She worries about sharing food with her friends and eating certain kinds of foods, afraid of getting sick or food poisoning. Raina’s mother enrolls her in therapy. At first Raina isn’t sure about seeing a therapist, but over time she develops healthy coping mechanisms to deal with her stress and anxiety. Her therapist helps her learn to ground herself and relax, and in turn she teaches her classmates for a school project. Amping up the green, wavy lines to evoke Raina’s nausea, Telgemeier brilliantly produces extremely accurate visual representations of stress and anxiety. Thought bubbles surround Raina in some panels, crowding her with anxious “what if”s, while in others her negative self-talk appears to be literally crushing her. Even as she copes with anxiety disorder and what is eventually diagnosed as mild irritable bowel syndrome, she experiences the typical stresses of school life, going from cheer to panic in the blink of an eye. Raina is white, and her classmates are diverse; one best friend is Korean American.
With young readers diagnosed with anxiety in ever increasing numbers, this book offers a necessary mirror to many. (Graphic memoir. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-545-85251-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
Essential.
A measured corrective to pervasive myths about what is often referred to as the “first Thanksgiving.”
Contextualizing them within a Native perspective, Newell (Passamaquoddy) touches on the all-too-familiar elements of the U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving and its origins and the history of English colonization in the territory now known as New England. In addition to the voyage and landfall of the Mayflower, readers learn about the Doctrine of Discovery that arrogated the lands of non-Christian peoples to European settlers; earlier encounters between the Indigenous peoples of the region and Europeans; and the Great Dying of 1616-1619, which emptied the village of Patuxet by 1620. Short, two- to six-page chapters alternate between the story of the English settlers and exploring the complex political makeup of the region and the culture, agriculture, and technology of the Wampanoag—all before covering the evolution of the holiday. Refreshingly, the lens Newell offers is a Native one, describing how the Wampanoag and other Native peoples received the English rather than the other way around. Key words ranging from estuary to discover are printed in boldface in the narrative and defined in a closing glossary. Nelson (a member of the Leech Lake Band of Minnesota Chippewa) contributes soft line-and-color illustrations of the proceedings. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Essential. (Nonfiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-72637-4
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Scholastic Nonfiction
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
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