Here's the second installment of our annual roundup of children's gift books for the holidays.
Superb Nonfiction for All Ages
Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream by Tanya Lee Stone (Candlewick, $24.99 hardcover, 9780763636111/0763636118; $17.99 paperback, 9780763645021/0763645028; 144 pp., ages 10-up, February 2009)
Stone (Elizabeth Leads the Way) begins this eye-opening history with the July 1999 launch of Columbia, piloted by Eileen Collins, the first woman to command a space shuttle, then fills in the details of the women who helped pave the path to this moment. Led by Jerrie Cobb, in 1961 a dozen women "took their shot at being astronauts." Stone demonstrates how prevailing attitudes at the time (which traveled all the way up the chain of command to Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson), as well as an embittered female pilot, obstructed the path to space exploration for these women, who put their jobs and families at stake in pursuit of their dream. Copiously illustrated with photographs, this volume may well be as revelatory to women's history and space program buffs as it will be to young readers.
This beautifully designed, hand-size volume published in partnership with the Anne Frank House makes an ideal gift for any age admirer of Anne Frank. The book takes us inside the pages of The Diary of a Young Girl, via quotes and photographs of pages from Anne's original journal, and into the Amsterdam annex where the Franks stayed hidden from the world during the Nazi occupation, until, on Friday, August 4, 1944, the Secret Annex was invaded. Pictures taken during Anne and her sister Margot's early years depict a normal childhood spent at the beach and in school (the cover shows Anne's passport pictures). Photos of the interior and exterior of 263 Prinsengracht make the journey through this book the next best thing to a visit to what is now preserved as the Anne Frank House.Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose (Melanie Kroupa/FSG, $19.95, 9780374313227/0374313229, 144 pp., ages 10-up, February 2009)
Phillip Hoose won the 2009 National Book Award for this book about an African-American teen who, in segregated Montgomery, Ala., refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white passenger on March 2, 1955--nine months before Rosa Parks's identical action set off the Montgomery bus boycotts. Colvin was only 15 when she took a brave stand by remaining seated, and she was thrown in jail. Although she was released on probation, "I would have a police record whenever I went to get a job, or when I tried to go to college," Colvin said. A little over one year later, on May 11, 1956, she once again stood up for justice, as a plaintiff in the Browder v. Gayle case, which challenged the constitutionality of Alabama's segregation laws. Not only does Hoose's account, liberally laced with quotes from interviews he conducted with Colvin, set the record straight, it is an inspiration to all young people about the sweeping changes that can come from one brave act and a belief in doing the right thing.Genius of Common Sense: Jane Jacobs and the Story of the Death and Life of Great American Cities by Glenna Lang and Marjory Wunsch (David R. Godine, $17.95, 9781567923841/1567923844, 128 pp., ages 9-12, June 2009)
Born to a physician and a nurse on May 4, 1916, in Scranton, Pa, the opinionated young Jane Butzner's ideas would later shape the development and approach to urban areas across the United States. Jane headed to New York City at the tender age of 18 and, before long, had published a poem in the New York Herald Tribune while working as a secretary. She became a journalist, and a 1943 feature article in the Iron Age promoted her hometown as an attractive place for businesses, after Scranton's coal mines were depleted and 25,000 miners were out of work. Jane met and married Robert Hyde Jacobs Jr., an architect, in 1947 and, while raising her family in New York's Greenwich Village, began to formulate her philosophy about urban planning as many families fled the cities for the suburbs after World War II. These ideas became the basis for her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and she practiced what she preached: she took on the mighty Robert Moses twice to save her neighborhood's Washington Square Park and also defeated a plan to build an expressway that would have destroyed what is now SoHo.Marching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don't You Grow Weary by Elizabeth Partridge (Viking/Penguin, $19.99, 9780670011896/0670011894, 80 pp., ages 10-up, October 2009)
"The first time Joanne Blackmon was arrested, she was just ten years old," begins Elizabeth Partridge's (John Lennon: All I Want Is the Truth) account of the events leading up to the 54-mile civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. Joanne's grandmother Sylvia Johnson was involved in the Dallas County Voters League and attempted to register fellow African-American residents to vote. But a racist governor, George Wallace ("Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" he cried), and a racist sheriff, Jim Clark, employed intimidation tactics that kept potential voters from registering for fear of losing their jobs or being paid a call by the KKK, until Johnson traveled to Atlanta to seek help from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Partridge makes clear what a crucial role children played in spreading the word, marching in protest and being willing to be jailed in pursuit of positive change. Photographs as powerful as the quotes, songs and poetry combine in this elegantly designed volume to deliver a wallop.A Savage Thunder: Antietam and the Bloody Road to Freedom by Jim Murphy (McElderry/S&S, $17.99, 9780689876332/0689876335, 112 pp., ages 9-12, July 2009)
Jim Murphy (Truce, see below) here encapsulates the issues and events that prompted "the bloodiest single day in American history"--September 17, 1862. The author presents both sides of the Civil War and the tensions within the Union army leadership (particularly between President Abraham Lincoln and General George B. McClellan), and recounts how Corporal Barton Mitchell's discovery of what came to be called Confederate General Lee's "Lost Orders" led to a key strategic victory for the Union army. Murphy puts a human face on the many individuals on both sides of the conflict through letters and primary documents, and also gives a context for the timing of Lincoln's delivery of the Emancipation Proclamation, outlining the president's national and constitutional considerations.Truce: The Day the Soldiers Stopped Fighting by Jim Murphy (Scholastic, $19.99, 9780545130493/0545130492, 144 pp., ages 9-12, October 2009)
In contrast to the bloodbath at Antietam in A Savage Thunder (above), Murphy's account of December 25, 1914, describes a spontaneous peace precipitated by more than 100,000 soldiers on both sides of the trenches during the Great War. Kaiser Wilhelm's failure to read the full text of Serbia's reply to Austria's demands resulted in a battle that engulfed the globe--a battle that even the soldiers eventually deemed fruitless. In both Savage Thunder and Truce, Murphy allows the soldiers to speak for themselves through letters, documents and other primary source material. No official photographers were present during the Christmas Truce, so many of the photographs in Murphy's volume--of Germans and Brits lifting a glass or posing together good-naturedly--were taken by the soldiers themselves. Murphy also demonstrates how the Germans' bitterness about the Versailles Treaty at the close of the Great War laid the groundwork for World War II.--Jennifer M. Brown