Making American history come alive

REVIEWS BY ALICE CARY

July 4th means fireworks, apple pie and history. We've found several history books for young readers worth adding to your family's celebration. First up is At Ellis Island: A History in Many Voices written by Louise Peacock and illustrated by Walter Lyon Krudop. My eight-year-old twins and I pored over this book the night before we toured Ellis Island. It was the perfect introduction to one of the most fascinating spots in American history—and the place where my daughters' great-grandparents arrived from Ireland years ago.

This book packs plenty into its pages in a compelling way: historical photos, quotes from various immigrants and Ellis Island workers, illustrative paintings and the fictional diary of Sera, a 10-year-old girl whose mother has died, on a ship from Armenia. These different facets work well together to create an incredibly vivid, informative look at the difficulties of traveling to a strange land and experiencing the joy, confusion and fears of the Ellis Island bureaucracy.


Another wonderfully evocative book is Deborah Hopkinson's Sweet Land of Liberty, about Marian Anderson's 1939 performance in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

Hopkinson's lively writing turns this historical event into a dramatic tale, beginning with a young boy's first experience with injustice when he is nearly expelled from a Virginia school for hanging a portrait of Abraham Lincoln in the classroom. That boy grew up to be Oscar Chapman, assistant secretary of the interior under Franklin Roosevelt, and this boyhood injustice stayed with him. He came up with the idea for the Anderson concert to be held at the Lincoln Memorial and helped make it a reality.

Hopkinson's narrative moves along in a compelling way, and she ends with a helpful historical note about the events and her research. Leonard Jenkins' mixed-media illustrations are beautifully modern, yet full of the historical images important to this tale: the U.S. Capitol, Marian Anderson and the Lincoln Memorial.


Founding fathers (and mothers)

My girls and I thoroughly enjoyed Louise Borden's fictitious classroom story, The John Hancock Club, illustrated by Adam Gustavson. Sean McFerrin and the other students in his third-grade class are learning cursive writing, and if they do well, their teacher will induct them into the John Hancock Club. This story definitely inspires curiosity about John Hancock, and the back cover of the book shows a copy of the Declaration of Independence with his defining signature.


Borden's book has little historical information, however, so be sure to pair it with A Picture Book of John Hancock by David A. and Michael S. Adler, illustrated by Ronald Himler. This is one of a series of excellent, introductory biographies by David Adler, who also writes the Cam Jansen series.


Want to show your kids that Pocahontas wasn't actually a Disney princess? Get the gorgeous new book Pocahontas: Princess of the New World written by well-known children's biographer Kathleen Krull and illustrated by David Diaz. Krull explains that Pocahontas was a royal princess who was "kind and compassionate, of course, and clever and fearless." Here is historical writing for the young at its best: full of facts and yet flowing in an exciting, storylike way. Diaz's illustrations are bright and brilliant, full of color and an energy all their own.


While we're on the subject of Pocahontas, one of my favorite series of historical books for children has a new entry, just in time for the 400th anniversary of the historical Virginia settlement—1607: A New Look at Jamestown by Karen E. Lange, with photos by Ira Block. This series features well-written historical narratives accompanied by the wonderful photographs for which National Geographic is so well known. What makes the photos even better in this case are the historical re-enactors who have been photographed, thus making the history literally come to life. We see, for instance, a settler firing a musket, a blacksmith at work and a Native American woman cooking, as well as archaeologists at work at Jamestown.

I still vividly remember my own tours of Jamestown when I was a girl, and soon I hope to take my children back for a visit. Looks like we'll be poring over some more history books!


Alice Cary writes from Groton, Massachusetts.

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