The experiences of child soldiers in various parts of Africa have been the subject of novels, memoirs, and even picture books in recent years. For adult and older teen readers, outstanding titles include Ishmael Beah’s memoir A Long Way Gone,…
Tag: reviews
On Leadership and Social Justice: A Review of March Book One
As a college student in 1958, John Lewis read a comic-book account of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the activism of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. By that point, Lewis had come to question the Jim Crow measures that limited…
The Graphic Novel/Essay in Pursuit of Science: A Review of How to Fake a Moon Landing
For the past several years I have been photographing scenes and creating stories using Lego minifigures, and my work in this medium has led to my wider reading of graphic novels. I have become acquainted with the great variety of…
Exploring the Range of New Adult: A Review of Sideshow of Merit
Ann Angel’s interview with Lauren Myracle about The Infinite Moment of Us touched on the emergence of New Adult—a publishing category designed to appeal to readers in their upper teens and early twenties. Various other discussion groups have focused on…
Against Forgetting: The Nazi Hunters
By the late 1950s, it appeared that the Holocaust was fading from the memories of all but those who had experienced it personally. The United States and other Western nations were more concerned about the Soviet threat, and neo-Nazi groups…
“Blue Skies and Starry Nights”: A Review of Remember Dippy
Thirteen-year-old Johnny hopes to spend his summer swimming and hanging out with his friends in their Vermont town. But his mother must work in New York, and his father, who lives in Boston, has other priorities, so Johnny is sent…
Divided Loyalties: A Review of Brotherhood
In Richmond, Virginia in 1867, 14-year-old Shadrach Weaver is awakened early and violently one morning. Federal soldiers beat him and carry away his older brother, Jeremiah, wanted for murder. The victim, George Nelson, is an itinerant teacher, a white man…
Surviving Depression: A Review of Every Day After
The long recession and weak recovery have kindled interest in the Great Depression and the ways that families responded to sudden economic deprivation nearly a century ago. Laura Golden’s new middle grade novel Every Day After (Delacorte) mines the author’s…
Urban Dilemmas: A Review of Nowhere to Run and Flowers in the Sky
I’ve been reading a lot lately about growing inequality and hardening class differences in the United States. Opportunities for success seem harder to come by in what was once known around the world as the Land of Opportunity. But even…
Politics Comes to Town: A Review of The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano
Fifteen-year-old Evelyn Serrano sees herself as an ordinary girl living in El Barrio, Spanish Harlem in 1969. She has just started a new job in a department store and is proud of her ability to earn money for herself and…