The United States is a melting pot, and immigration is a hot topic.
All eight of author Linda Barrett Osborne's grandparents were born in Italy, and all of them came through New York's Ellis Island in the late 1800s. As Osborne points out, "The ancestors of everyone who lives here, except for the Native Americans 'discovered' in North America by Europeans in the early sixteenth century, came from somewhere else." The Statue of Liberty, a symbol of hope around the world, welcomes "Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." And sometimes not. This Land Is Your Land shows, for better or for worse, just how similar immigration policy has sounded since the time of Benjamin Franklin--a perpetual wavering between openness and restriction.
Osborne (Traveling the Freedom Road; Miles to Go for Freedom) tells the story of American immigration with dozens of personal anecdotes that make the statistics live and breathe, giving essential, often eye-opening context to today's debates. Abundant high-quality historical photographs and illustrations--and a time line of immigration history--further invigorate the author's engaging, pithy text that covers "Germans, Irish and Nativists"; "Italians, Jews, and Eastern Europeans"; "Immigrants from Asia"; "Latin American Immigrants"; "Refugees"; and immigration from "World War II into the Twenty-First Century." The handsome two-column design, illustrated with so many wonderful faces of newcomers from around the world, goes a long way to help clarify and enliven this tragic and triumphant, ever-evolving global story. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness