Classics, Nonfiction, and Children's Literature
The book is realistic harsh chapter book care for children able to handle the concepts presented therein, such as child slavery. I read this book a few months ago, and I believe I may have been in a very emotional part of my pregnancy because I cried from the very beginning to the end of the book! Continue Reading
Passenger on the Pearl by Winifred Conkling (Algonquin Books, January 13, 2015) is a middle-grade nonfiction story about two young girls who sought to escape slavery in 1840s Washington, D.C.
Emily Edmonson was only 13 when she joined siblings and others on the small ship The Pearl in hopes to escape North. It was the most daring mass slave escape ever attempted, and it was tragically captured before it reached the safety of the North. The book captures the horrors of slavery from a unique perspective: that of a girl on the brink of freedom.Continue Reading
As I’ve scoured the lists of books about revolutionary America for a book to read for my own education, I struggled to find one that covered a variety of people (I love biographies, but I can’t read one about everyone!) and eras (I would love to learn about all eras of the revolution, from the pre-revolution, the actual war years, to the beginning of the republic and later political fall out). At the same time that I’m I’ve been searching for the perfect book about the revolutionary era, I remembered I had picked up a used copy of Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph Ellis (Vintage Books, 2000) in a previous year’s book sale. I decided it was the book to read right now.
I was expecting Founding Brothers to be a collection of mini-biographies about the “brothers” of the revolutionary generation. Or maybe it would be about the Constitutional Convention and how they all worked together. Honestly, I did not know what it was, but any expectations I did have were far surpassed in Ellis’s complex portrait of the generation that founded the country. His work is both thorough and completely readable.Continue Reading
I wonder if my recent news about my upcoming arrival prompted me to notice this book on the New Books shelf? Possibly. Baby Monkey is a GIRL! and I’m delighted and excited that Raisin will have a little sister.
At any rate, when I saw the biography of the two foremost proponents of women’s rights (at least for the last half of the 1800s), I felt the need to pick it up and read it. For, although I know the name of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and I’ve of course been exposed the Susan B. Anthony as an historical figure, I knew very little of the work, the lives, and the legacy of the two women.
Penny Colman’s young adult biography of the two women (titled Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: A Friendship That Changed the World) tells their story, especially focusing on the women’s rights work that they dedicated their lives to. Although the book had some flaws, it was full of history that I needed to learn and I’m glad I read it. Continue Reading
