Social Studies

Fatal Fever: Tracking Down Typhoid Mary by Gail Jarrow

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Published by Calkins Creek

Summary:  Everyone’s heard of Typhoid Mary, but who was she really?  Uncovering her identity was a medical mystery that began in the summer of 1906.  The detective was Dr. George Soper, a sanitation engineer who helped control a typhoid epidemic that swept through the town of Ithaca and Cornell University.  When a wealthy family on Long Island was sickened with typhoid, they hired Soper to figure out what had caused the outbreak.  He eventually tracked it to Mary Mellon, their former cook.  Not only that, but he was able to trace several other outbreaks to her.  The book chronicles her capture and confinement on an island off of Manhattan for most of the rest of her life. The reader will also learn about typhoid, its role in history, and how it has gradually been eliminated from most of the western world.

Pros:  I had heard of typhoid and Typhoid Mary but knew nothing about it.  The lack of sanitation in the U.S. less than a century ago was pretty appalling.  Celebrities like Abigail Adams, Wilbur Wright, and Stephen Douglas all died of typhoid.  Although this book is nonfiction, it reads like a novel.

Cons:  You may find yourself looking askance at your tap water.  And you will surely nag your children more to wash their hands.

New Shoes by Susan Lynn Meyer, illustrated by Eric Velasquez

~ Janet Dawson ~ 2 Comments

Published by Holiday House

Summary:  When Ella Mae’s family scrapes together enough money to buy her a new pair of shoes, she is dismayed to learn that black people can’t try on shoes at the store.  She watches a white girl try on her shoes, while Ella Mae’s mother has to trace around her foot to figure out her size.  The first day she wears her shoes to school, she feels bad about her experience at the shoe store all day.  Then she and her friend Charlotte come up with a brilliant plan.  For weeks, they do chores for people, asking for payment in used shoes.  Finally, they display all the shoes in their barn, then put a sign up announcing people can buy a pair for ten cents and another used pair of shoes.  The people in their community are thrilled that they’ll never have to use the shoe store again.

Pros:  I loved this powerful story about segregation.  Instead of the girls feeling victimized by it, they come up with a solution and work hard to make it happen.

Cons:  The solution is inspiring but a bit simplistic, and a larger conversation about segregation would be helpful when reading this.

Home by Carson Ellis

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Published by Candlewick

Summary: With a single sentence on each page, Carson Ellis explores the concept of home.  Some of her homes are real (“Home is an apartment”), and some are fanciful (“Atlantians make their homes underwater”).  Each page is beautifully illustrated with many rich details.

Pros:  This book is a feast for the imagination.  Kids will enjoy poring over the illustrations. There could be many ways to extend this into activities, such as researching homes around the world, or designing homes for different people or creatures.

Cons:  There’s not a straightforward narrative, and kids looking at this book on their own might find it a little confusing.

Where Is the Great Wall? by Patricia Brennan Demuth, illustrated by Jerry Hoare and David Groff

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Published by Grosset and Dunlap

Summary:  Starting with the answer to the question in the title (China), the book explores how and why the wall was built within the context of Chinese history.  In addition to the main narrative, there are many single-page sidebars that contain information on relevant topics such as Confucius, making silk, and Chinese inventions.  Liberally illustrated with simple black line drawings, the text covers the history of the Great Wall from the construction of the first walls around 4000 B.C. to Deng Xiaoping’s ambitious plans to restore the Wall at the end of the twentieth century.

Pros:  This is one of a fabulous series of books published by Random House.  There are many, many excellent biographies in the “Who Is” series, and now there are “What Is” and “Where Is” titles that cover mostly U.S. history, but also some world history.  Filled with kid-friendly facts such as: if the Great Wall were in the U.S. it would stretch from Florida to the North Pole, and over a million Chinese workers died while building the Wall.

Cons:  The world timeline at the end could be a little more complete to show what was going on in the rest of the world during important Chinese events.

Gordon Parks: How the Photographer Captured Black and White America by Carole Boston Weatherford, illustrated by Jamey Christoph

~ Janet Dawson ~ 1 Comment

Published by Albert Whitman and Company

Summary:  Born in 1915 in Kansas, Gordon Parks grew up hearing from his white teachers that he was destined to be a porter or a waiter.  He did indeed become a waiter, but the purchase of a $7.50 camera put him on the road to a new career as a photographer.  He worked for the Farm Security Administration, Life, and Vogue, and was the first African American to direct a feature film.  He used his photos to work for human rights, exposing the plight of African Americans in big cities like Chicago and Washington, D.C.

Pros:  The lyrical writing and colorful illustrations are a perfect match.  I love biographies like this that teach about a little-known person who made contributions to both art and humanitarianism.

Cons:  The spare text gives only the bare bones of Parks’ life.  Be sure to read the author’s note at the end.

Gingerbread for Liberty! How a German Baker Helped Win the American Revolution by Mara Rockliff, illustrated by Vincent X. Kirsch

~ Janet Dawson ~ 2 Comments

Published by HMH Books for Young Readers

Summary:  Christopher Ludwick was from Germany, but he loved his adopted country of America.  When the Revolutionary War began, he decided to close up his Philadelphia bakery and do what he could to help General Washington.  Not only did he become the head baker for the Continental Army, but he helped woo the German soldiers to the American side.  The author’s note tells that the money Ludwick left in his will to educate needy children in Philadelphia is still used today to give out $200,000 in grants each year.

Pros:  A fun story that tells of a little-known but important contributor to the American fight for independence.  The cut-paper illustrations will make kids smile.

Cons: It’s a little hard to tell what would be the best audience for this book.  It seems to be written for fairly young kids, but readers would appreciate the story more with some background knowledge of the Revolution.

Seeds of Freedom: the Peaceful Integration of Huntsville, Alabama by Hester Bas, illustrated by E. B. Lewis

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Published by Candlewick

Summary:  While other southern towns were rocked by violence during the civil rights movement, Huntsville, Alabama worked hard to integrate peacefully.  Known as “the space center of the universe”, Huntsville had a bit more of a national reputation as a place where rockets were being designed and built.  But life wasn’t as good for all its citizens, and they decided to take some of the actions that were taking place in other cities across the south.  There were lunch counter sit-ins, marches, and demonstrations.  When a dentist’s wife and baby daughter were put in jail, Huntsville found itself in the national headlines.  The town had more at stake, with the threat of losing federal funding.  Slowly, businesses started to allow blacks, then the hospital, bowling alley, and movie theater.  School integration proved a little rockier, but on September 9, 1963, the first African-American child entered a white public school without incident.

Pros:  This is an inspiring story of dignity and courage demonstrated by both blacks and whites in Huntsville.  The uglier side of integration isn’t ignored, but the main theme is planting seeds of peace and what it took to make them grow in Huntsville.  The present tense voice lends an immediacy to the story, more than 50 years after it unfolded.

Cons:  While this is in picture book format, there’s quite a bit of text.  Kids in the primary grades would need a good deal of guidance to get through it.

Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom: My Story of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March by Lynda Blackmon Lowery

~ Janet Dawson ~ 1 Comment

Published by Dial Books

Summary:  “By the time I was fifteen years old, I had been in jail nine times.”  So begins Lynda Blackmon Lowery’s memoir of growing up in Selma, Alabama.  What heinous crimes had she committed to have spent so much time in jail?  Joining the marches to give blacks in Alabama the right to vote.  Lynda turned 15 on the Selma to Montgomery march in March, 1965.  The youngest member of the group of 300 that made the trip, she wanted to go so that she could show George Wallace the bandages she still had from the beating she received on Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965, protesting the murder of activist Jimmie Lee Jackson.  “You have a voice, too,” Blackmun concludes her story, “and with determination, you can be a history maker, just like me.”

Pros:  With the movie Selma, the events of fifty years ago are in the news again.  This is a powerful introduction for kids and teens, told by a girl just like them, who found the courage over and over again to speak out for what she believed in.

Cons:  Although there is nothing terribly graphic, some of the stories may be disturbing to younger kids.  There should definitely be some discussion and historical context to go along with reading this book.

A Fine Dessert: Four Families, Four Centuries, One Delicious Treat by Emily Jenkins, illustrated by Sophie Blackall

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Published by Schwartz & Wade

Summary:  A parent and child work together to make a serve a dessert called blackberry fool in four different centuries.  In 1710 England, a girl and her mother beat cream with a bundle of twigs to whip it, pick and strain blackberries, and store their concoction in an ice pit set into a hillside.  100 years later, a mother and daughter who are slaves in Charleston, South Carolina do the same thing, using the tools available to them at that time.  The process is repeated by a mother/daughter pair in 1910 Boston, and finally, by a father and son in San Diego in 2010.  The author’s note at the end suggests topics of discussion, not only noticing the changes in technology and food preparation, but also the inclusion of slaves and the fact that a boy and his father would probably not have been in the kitchen before the late 20th century.  Don’t worry, a recipe is included!

Pros:  You won’t be able to read this book just once.  It repeats the same story four times, with a new cast of characters and new century with each retelling.  The menu for the dinner is given in each story, so the reader learns a little about foods people ate at that time.  The cream is whipped with twigs, a wire whisk, a rotary beater, and an electric mixer, with the whipping time getting shorter with each new technology.  The food is kept cool in a variety of interesting ways.  The notes at the end are fascinating, explaining how the author and illustrator did their research.  The illustrator’s note will send you back to the book to study the details of the pictures more carefully.  This is nonfiction at its best, a book that could be used for teaching in many different ways.

Cons:  The two feet of snow in my backyard that prevented me from picking blackberries.