End of November Cybils Reading, Part 2

I'm still not all the way caught up, but if I don't send this out I'll be even farther behind!

High School Nonfiction

She Represents: 44 Women Who Are Changing Politics ... and the World, Caitlin Donahue. A collection of women, mostly from the US but a solid minority from other countries, who help shape the world through politics. There's a standard format: A page giving identifying information (date of birth, positions held, identifying quote), then two short essays that provide a personal biography and a political one. Then it finishes with a bulleted list of three or four achievements and some more quotations. It's a bit of a slog to power through them all, but it would be a fun book for dipping into or getting a quick overview of one of the included women.

The women come from all sides of the political divide -- there's Betsy DeVos and Jacinda Ardern, and Donahue manages to sound just as proud of both women's accomplishments. And while conservative women are lauded, the criteria for womanhood is liberal -- many lesbians or bisexual women, as well as trans women are included. It feels a bit odd to point that out, because why wouldn't trans women be included? 

Poisoned Water: How the Citizens of Flint, Michigan Fought For the Lives and Warned the Nation, Candy J. Cooper. The basic story of how the city of Flint poisoned its people is grim enough; Cooper attempts to find a more positive through line by highlighting how the ordinary people worked to discover the truth and then get something changed. But despite huge efforts, they weren't actually that successful, so the positivity is a bit muted. But the book does a good job of telling what happened, from the racist zoning and city line drawing that made Flint's bankruptcy inevitable and then the dangers of the city manager system, where one (appointed) manager had all the power, and his only mandate was to balance the budget. So citizens were overcharged for services such as public water, even when the water was laced with lead or carcinogens. Cost cutting efforts included not hiring competent people to run the water plant, so well-meaning people pulled over from other city branches tried to jury rig something from outdated manuals and a few web searches. They were not successful. The state agencies reserved their disapproval for anyone going over their heads to the federal experts. 

Today the pipes still aren't trustworthy. The people have a sense of community, or rather several communities because Blacks and whites still don't mix much. Other cities now can see a map of their possible futures, and maybe a few of them will know enough to alter course? But many others will be doomed to follow as our ancient city water systems continue to degrade. I wasn't completely won over by the citizenship hook, but the overall description of Flint was well told. 

Middle Grade Nonfiction

Cy Young: An American Baseball Hero, Scott H. Longert. I read sports biographies like these by the small handful as a kid (and I wasn't even a sporty kid). This one had the cheerful air of a guy finding out that his hero is an even greater person than he dreamed -- Cy (short for Cyclone, as his pitches felt to the other team) was a hard worker, a straight-up guy, and a kind man. He also pitched for a very long career, and kept in shape by being a farmer. His dad fought in the Civil War and then came home to marry and have a baseball playing kid. It's all fun! But there's a glaring omission in the very detailed history, which sometimes covers every important pitching game in a season. It never mentions that Cy was protected by not having to play against Black baseball players. Not noticing that baseball was segregated is a huge omission -- there's asterisks next to every record set when the players don't have to compete against the best players. 

Women Win the Vote!: 19 For the 19th Amendment, Nancy B. Kennedy. Nine short (3 large pages, but with illustrations) biographies of American women who worked for suffrage. There's an effort to include a few non-white women, but mostly these are the big names we are familiar with. It's a good overview of the people involved with getting women the vote. 

It ends with a round-up of people who didn't make the 19 top list, including some men who weren't eligible but who helped. In the back there's a timeline of events, notes for the sources/quotes for each biography, a source list and an index. Oh, there's also some photos of women and their banners, and a suggested list of places to visit that are relevant. I like this book and the wealth of books coming out in this 100 year anniversary of suffrage, but I'm not sure a lot of people would sit down to read it cover to cover. It's a good jumping off place for more research though; kids looking for ideas on who to write biography reports on would have fun here.  

 

Elementary Nonfiction

Oscar's American Dream, Barry Wittenstein. A history of a city (I think New York?) told through the occupancy of a corner retail space. Oscar is the neighborhood barber who starts it, spreading goodwill through candy for children. But he moves on to a better job working for the city, and new owners come in, go bankrupt, are burnt out, or change and reinvent themselves with the times. At the end the block will be torn down for luxury apartments and a descendent of Oscar and and woman who remembers the candy commiserate about it. It's a fun concept, but I found myself unsettled by all the broken stories -- what happened to the women whose dress shop went bust in the Wall Street Crash? Was their adequate fire insurance for the burnt out proprietor? Why in the world did everyone keep the barber pole?

Consumers, Grace Hansen. This is part of a great series on Ecology for little people. I love the covers -- they apparently gave big "sciency" glasses to a bunch of kids and told them to look like a scientist. The text is simple sentences that give the basics of a topic; in this case, what it means to be a "consumer" organism. The photos are sharp an interesting, and I like that they use real vocabulary. There's a table of contents, a glossary and an index, all of which work both as their intended purpose and as demonstrations of what these part of a book do. This is an example of trying to do a simple thing and doing it quite well.

Wild Style: Amazing Animal Adornments, Jenna Grodzicki. This bright slightly irreverent book looks at animal looks, especially looks they modify through behavior, and then discusses how and why and for what benefit the animal does this. Animals may be avoiding predators or attracting food or luring a mate, and the concept of zoology is absorbed -- people can study animals and make predictions about the benefit of an observation and then test that. The back matter has more formal information about each animal -- official name and habitat, and then includes suggestions for further reading. The pictures would entice an animal lover and the texts nudges kids towards a scientific mindset. It's not very deep though; mostly it's there to show off the pictures of cool animals doing cool things. I received a copy for review from the publisher.

Alphabet of Black Cultures, Jeffrey Daniels. Nice alphabet book with a consistent art style that I think is based on African style -- it's a little cubist with figures created from blocky chunks and strokes. Distinctive and appealing. Each page has an illustration of the chosen word for the letter and a description of what it is and how it's used and where it's from. It's a fun alphabet book that provides some context for African cultures. The publisher shared a review copy with me.

The Story of Alexander Hamilton: A Biography Book For New Readers, Christine Platt. An educational biography of Hamilton, with didactic elements like review and comprehension questions scattered along the way. I also liked the little timelines that helped put events in context; I wish more books had those! It covers his childhood, revolutionary and constitutional work, and then his death, all in clear and comprehensible language with illustrations along the way. Its moral compass is clear -- anti-slavery, pro-democracy, and everything that I expect in a elementary text but is now maybe political?

The publisher provided me with a copy of this book in return for including the following text in my review:
Copyright line: Excerpt from The Story of Alexander Hamilton: A Biography Book for New Readers (The Story Of: A Biography Series for New Readers), by Christine Platt, published by Rockridge Press. Copyright © 2020 by Callisto Media. All rights reserved.

Purchase link: https://www.amazon.com/Story-Alexande...

The Voice of Liberty, Angelica Shirley Carpenter. This is not a book about the Statue of Liberty, but about the New York suffrage movement's protests around its dedication. They wanted to use the moment to show the gap between rhetoric and reality; the men organizing things wanted them to shut up. The three leaders of the organization are shown, as are the hard work and confrontational efforts of the women in their attempts to put women's right to vote into the discussion. It's an interesting look into a neglected piece of history.

Let's Eat: Mealtime Around the World, Lynne Marie. A fun book that shows what different kids around the world are eating, starting with breakfast and moving through the day. There are kids from South America to Iceland, with fun facts about the countries included. I wish they had kept the facts to food stuff; most of them are which makes the odd comment about llamas seem out of place. It wouldn't have been hard to link them all to food -- there must be a traditional food to eat while watching cricket, a popular sport in India. 

The publisher sent me this book for review.

Rock Climbing, Marie-Therese Miller. This short explanation is part of a series on extreme sports. It goes over the different types (bouldering, free climb) and the equipment used by each type. Along the way it prods the reader with questions -- why pick one type over another? Which would you prefer? At the end I had a solid sense of how climbing was done, but not a feel for *why*. Maybe the author thought it was self explanatory? The pictures were mostly clear photos; not spectacular but good images, except for one blurry shot that I didn't understand.

The publisher provided me with an ecopy for review. 

For Spacious Skies: Katherine Lee Bates and the Inspiration for "America the Beautiful, Nancy Churnin. I learned a lot from this book! I hadn't even known the the song was written as a poem and only later set to music, let alone that there was a popular contest to pick the best tune. I certainly didn't know about the poet, who was an accomplished woman, a writer, a suffrage advocate, a settlement house worker, and a college professor. I enjoyed learning about her and her career. I do quibble a bit about the end bit, which seem to imply that by now we've achieved the "mending of differences that pushed people apart" that Bates wanted but did not live to see. I think that's a bit overly optimistic, but I hope we are still pushing in that direction. 

The Old Man and the Penguin: A True Story of True Friendship, Julie Abery. The penguin is very cute. He meets the old men when he struggles to a beach covered in oil; Joao cleans off the penguin and tries to return him to the wild, but Dindim wants to stay. He'll leave on his aquatic migration south, but returns to hang with his human friend.

That's all very sweet, but I felt sad that Dindim wasn't building any relationships with his own kind. The backmatter discusses the pollution that caused the problem, and exhorts the reader to help deal with it, and also provides instructions on what to do if a wild animal is found so that there aren't more pet penguins being created whenever there's an opportunity. 

I liked the gentle and friendly illustrations, which did a good job of showing Dindim's emotions without overly anthropolizing him. Joao is an old man and is drawn that way.

Whooo Knew: The Truth About Owls, Annette Whipple. A fun animal picture book, with lots of information about owls. There were plenty of gorgeous photos-- usually one giant one per page and then an assortment of smaller shots. The pictures were great, but not eye-poppingly amazing, which was a little disappointing because the cover had led me to hope for amazing. It looks at sleeping habits, anatomy, seeing, hearing and hunting, all the stuff kids like to ask about. I was a bit confused about nesting vs roosting spots, but that's because it's only been about a week since I learned that birds don't tend to sleep in nests; that's where eggs go, not a bedroom. So I'm primed for the difference now. 

Owl books are great places to learn about owl pellets, and this one has instructions on how to do your dissection safely. It's well laid out, with a variety of different fonts in different sizes to draw the eye from section to section, and ending with the pellet dissection and a glossary plus web sites for more information. 

I received a copy of this book from the publisher. 

Stem in the World Series, Marne Ventura. Although a fun book and great for baseball fans, I felt it needed a bit more focus; the book moved around between how technology has changed viewing the game, building stadiums for baseball, and tracking metrics for the game. It's all interesting, but I wanted a sharper organization and more lines from principle to execution -- tell me what statistics are, and then how it affects the World Series. Tell me how technology made cameras and radios, and then how it changed how we view the game. 

I liked the clarity of the text and the many photos. The publisher provided me with a copy of the book for review.

I want to once again appreciate the kids on the covers, who are all apparently modeling "scientist with cool glasses" to great effect. All these books do some things I like a lot -- they explain their ecological topic with simplicity but without talking down to kids, and are willing to use big words that say exactly what they mean. They all model tables of contents, chapters, indexes and glossaries in ways that make evident what they are for -- they work within the book but since they might be the first time a student notices them, I like how well they do their job. The book treats the reader as an introductory scientist, an approach that a lot of kids will appreciate. 

The publisher provided me with e-copies of all these books for review.

Decomposers, Grace Hansen. The waste-recyclers of the ecosystem! This one seems to assume that the reader already read Consumers; detritivore is defined by not in the glossary. Hmm, there doesn't seem to be order notations. I like the slightly gruesome photos in this one. 

Food Chains, Grace Hansen. The photos in this one were well chosen and vibrant -- I liked the giraffe slurping up leaves and the contrast with the earthworms squirming through dirt. I'm not sure Hansen got down to the basics with the description of photosynthesis; are the readers really expected to understand what a "chemical process" means? The diagram also seemed to expect some prior knowledge. 

Food Webs, Grace Hansen. Good photos choices and clear writing. I thought the Table of Contents was a bit skimpy; there were more sections that could have been called out. 

Photosynthesis, Grace Hansen. Good pictures, good organization, good text. 

Producers, Grace Hansen. There are links to go through to the publisher's site for more activities, but I haven't tried them out. I like the glowing photos of plants in this one.