Kids Blog : history

Honey Cake

mrsweasley@evpl — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:39:00 GMT

Every year, David's mother bakes a honey cake for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year celebration. Eating honey cake symbolizes the hope that the new year will be sweet. David's sister Rachel expresses the opinion of all Denmark in 1943: "A sweet year would be a year without Nazis."

For three and a half years, the Germans have occupied Denmark, and now word comes that the Nazis plan to round up Denmark's Jews. Even with the help of friends, can David's family find a way to leave the country before they are sent to a concentration camp? Secret messages, breathless escapes and courageous resistance will keep you turning the pages of this history-based story. Author Joan Betty Stuchner includes Mama's Honey Cake recipe to help you taste the sweetness of hope for freedom that David's family shared.

Curious about Curious George?

bookmarkbeck@evpl — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:29:00 GMT

I was! I love adventure stories and was drawn to The Journey That Saved Curious George The True Wartime Escape of Margret and H.A. Rey by Louise Borden. Thanks to the author's exciting account, the reader is caught in the moving drama of the Rey's four month escape to safety. By early June 1940, the Belgians had surrendered to Germany. The British and French Army had to be evacuated from beaches at Dunkirk. The city of Paris was declared an open city-the government would not fight the invading army. The Reys were part of the largest motorized evacuation in history. More than 5 million people were on the roads in France. Many were refugees from Holland and Belgium heading south. The only transportation left were two bicycles that H.A. Rey put together from spare parts. The bikes had two large baskets to carry his valuable drawings-drawings that would someday be published and delight children and adults. Two big surprises in this story, curious? Read to find out. This book makes you think about that little monkey in a different way. The combination of photos and line drawings are a good touch. Curious George.

Who Was the Unhappiest President?

UndergroundLibrarian@evpl — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 19:30:00 GMT

All U. S. Presidents have had their troubles, but Steve Sheinkin (yep, the same guy who wrote King George; What Was His Problem?) writes about two who were President at the same time. When was that? During the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis had plenty of problems, and Sheinkin tells us about them in Two Miserable Presidents. It's a really understandable accounting of the Civil War, full of stories of individual people, some important and some not so important, but all of them are worth reading.

I knew there were women who disguised themselves as men and entered the army, but I hadn't heard of Loreta Janeta Velazquez, who joined the Confederate army as Harry T. Buford. All went well until her fake mustache got soaked in a big drink of buttermilk and started to come off. She spent the rest of the meal with "my hand up to my mouth all the time . . . doing my best to hold the mustache on." (p.70) As the war went on, both Presidents were getting lots of criticism from the press. One Southern newspaper wrote that "Jefferson Davis now treats all men as if they were idiotic insects." (p.85) And people in the North were so unhappy about the war going on and on that Lincoln feared he would not be reelected in 1864.

Quoting from inside the jacket cover, "Filled with surprising quotes, startling stories, and all the strange events that didn't make it into your textbook, this is history like you've never read it before: fast, frightening, and entirely true."

All the Gossip on the American Revolution!

UndergroundLibrarian@evpl — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 19:27:00 GMT

Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You About the American Revolution is the subtitle of this book. It recently arrived at Oakalyn Branch, and it has all sorts of stories about things in the American Revolution that I hadn't heard before. Steve Sheinkin has written King George: What Was His Problem? in such a conversational tone that it feels like he's telling us about people that he knows today.

Here's what he says about Ethan Allen, leader of the Green Mountain Boys: "Standing six foot six, with a furious temper, Allen was not the kind of guy you would want to have as an enemy. He was known to beat up two men at once by lifting them off the ground and banging them together." (p. 58) Everything he writes isn't so violent, but it does get my attention. When Ethan Allen demanded surrender of Fort Ticonderoga in the middle of the night, he woke up an officer by beating on the commander's door and shouting things like "Come out of there, you old rat!" Lieutenant Feltham had run out of his room undressed, but ran back to "grab some clothes, and stepped out into the hall . . . he tried to appear calm and in control (which is hard to do when you have your pants in your hand)." (p.59)

It turns out that if you read the introduction, called Confessions of a Textbook Writer, you find out that Steve Sheinkin has written history textbooks. While doing research for them, he found lots of stories that he thought wouldn't fit into those textbooks, so now he's written this book to tell some things about the American Revolution that most of us haven't heard before. Did you know that John Hancock thought he would be chosen to lead the American forces, instead of George Washington? Or that the man who hung the lanterns in Old North Church the night of Paul Revere's ride had British soldiers living in his house? He had to sneak out of his window and climb over rooftops to get to the church and back. Or that John Adams and Benjamin Franklin sometimes had a hard time getting along together? Especially if they had to share the same bedroom while they were traveling -- Adams got cold easily and wanted the window closed, but Franklin thought they needed the window open and proceeded to give Adams a long lecture on his viewpoint of fresh air and the real causes of colds -- it put Adams right to sleep.

But this book won't put you to sleep. I think you'll enjoy the black -and-white drawings by Tim Robinson, too.