My first Manson girl was Leslie Van Houten, the homecoming princess with the movie-star smile. She was on death row at nineteen for putting a knife into the already-dead body of some poor, random woman for the lamest reason that…
Category: history
THE SEAGOING COWBOY, and a surprise link to Heifer International
World War II had just ended. Families in Europe were starving. Many were homeless. Farmers had lost their livestock, their fields, even the seeds needed to replant. THE SEAGOING COWBOY describes in simple, effective words and illustrations the relief program,…
Clarina Nichols: Frontier Crusader for Women’s Rights by Diane Eickhoff
I very enthusiastically endorse this detailed and exacting biography. It does not focus on a particularly well-known women’s rights advocate (I had never heard of her…) and as such makes for a rounded reading of history. There are photographs…
Presenting Slavery in Picture Books: A Review of Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton
The recent furor over two picture books with themes of slavery and cooking—Emily Jenkins and Sophie Blackall’s One Fine Dessert and Ramin Ganeshram and Vanessa Brantley-Newton’s A Birthday Cake for George Washington (which ended up being withdrawn by Scholastic last…
Complicated Family Histories: A Review of Enchanted Air
Margarita Engle’s parents met in 1947, when her father, an artist from the U.S., visited the Museo Romántico in Trinidad de Cuba, her mother’s hometown; “it was love at first sight.” Although they didn’t speak each other’s language, he proposed…
The Many Faces of Josephine Baker
In this multi-layered portrait of one of the most famous African-American performers of the 20th century for Chicago Review Press’s Women of Action series, Peggy Caravantes presents us with Josephine Baker: a flamboyant, difficult woman whose dream of integration and…
Jars of Hope: How One Woman Helped Save 2,500 Children During the Holocaust
I remember my mom telling me something her mother used to say to her about racial issues:There are two kinds of people in this world: good and bad. I’m not so sure that sentiment is as facile as it may…
Stories of Courage and Hope in World War II: September 17 and Paper Hearts
Wherever they live, children are all too often the innocent victims of war. Millions of children perished during World War II, on all sides of the conflict, from Jewish and Roma children killed in the Holocaust to children whose homes…
An Eye-Opening True Story in Many Voices: A Review of Silver People
While many younger readers in the United States have learned of the civil rights struggle in the South, the story of the Panama Canal has been taught as a heroic conquest of humans against nature. In a powerful novel in…
Interview with Author Ann Bausum
Ann Bausum has written numerous non-fiction books for children and teens, documenting and breathing life into lesser known stories from our past. Her books often explore critical moments in the struggle for social justice, including the fight for racial justice…