Walt Whitman Words for America By Barbara Kerley

Walt Whitman: Words for America. by Barbara Kerley illustrated by Brian Selznick. Scholastic Press, 2004. 42 pages.

Review/Personal thoughts:  Tweens can identify immediately with the young Walt Whitman at age 12 working as a printer’s apprentice.  He had a lifelong love of words.  Walt is portrayed as man who loved to travel and observe people, but he was equally enamored with forests, orchards, rivers and the beach. He found his true calling in life when he began to write poems.  In his own words, “the genius of the United States was in the common people.” This book focuses on Whitman’s passion for (or reaction to) the issue of slavery, Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War.  Once the civil war broke out, whitman was drawn to spending time with wounded soldiers. He was equally adept at prose and wort of his visits to hospitals by saying “I have many hours afterwards, in far different scenes, had the pale faces, the look of death, the appealing eyes, come curiously of a sudden, plainly before me.”  He was distraught to find his younger brother’s name listed among the wounded and finally found him in a camp hospital. He stayed among the wounded there for over a week and gave voice to the soldiers through his poetic words. 

“By the bivouac’s fitful flame,

A procession winding around me,

Solemn and sweet and slow...

While wind in procession thoughts,

O tender and wondrous thoughts,

Of life and death, of home and the past

and loved, and of those that are far away...”

Walt was profoundly affected by the death and injury that war unleashed on the young men and returned to work in military hospitals, always taking notes and writing poems.  I was profoundly moved by a letter Whitman wrote to the parents of a soldier who died in the hospital. His tribute to Lincoln (whom he loved) upon his assassination, O Captain! is included in this book.  Sometimes we want tweens to love a book.  That is the case with me and Walt Whitman: Words for America.

Genre: Non-Fiction

Reading Level: 6.6 Interest level: Ages 8 to 14.

Awards: Notable/Best Books (A.L.A.) 2005

Harry Houdini for Kids by Laurie Carlson

Harry Houdini for Kids: His Life and Adventures with 21 Magic Tricks and Illusions. by Laurie Carlson. Chicago Review Press, 2009. 136 pages.

Review/Personal thoughts:  Harry Houdini was a name created by a boy to reinvent himself.  He was born in 1874 in Budapest Hungary with the name Ehrich Weisz.  With his family he immigrated to the United States when he was 4 years old and settled in Appleton, Wisconsin. Life was hard and Ehrich began learning simple card tricks to earn pennies on the street. One of the great features of this book is the inclusion of 21 magic tricks and illusions that offer a start for budding magicians.  At age 17, Ehrich invented his new name, Harry Houdini as a stage name for his magic show. Harry travelled with circuses, dime museums and freak shows performing his act.  He slowly began adding escapes into his act. He would be bound by chains and handcuffs and amaze the audience with his ability to wriggle free from the chains.  More dramatic escapes followed with police attempting to shackle him and every time he would escape. With his wife as a partner, Houdini expanded the act to include a mind reading act that left audiences stunned and was all based on a simple code. As Houdini created evermore spectacular feats they started to become death defying, capturing the attention of thousands of people at a time. In the milk can escape Houdini is handcuffed, put into a metal container filled with water and locked closed. The secret to the escape is revealed in the book!  The death defying escape act culminated with the Chinese Water Torture Cell. The mystery and controversy around his death concludes the book.   I remember as a tween, being fascinated by the life and death defying acts of Harry Houdini.  This man’s life is so remarkable, tweens of today will be equally fascinated.

Genre: Non-Fiction, Biography

Reading Level: 6.6 Interest level: Ages 8 to 11.

Tony Hawk and His Team-Skateboarding Superstars by Lita Sorensen

Tony Hawk and His Team: Skateboarding Superstars. by Lita Sorensen. Rosen Central, 2005. 64 pages.

Review/Personal thoughts:  For the right group, this story of Tony Hawk will be of high interest. The introduction describes Tony as a hyper, skinny fifth grader who was clumsy. He went on to become one of the best skateboarders ever. At age fourteen, Tony became a professional.  Stressed throughout the book is the concept of teamwork, which Tony says accounts for his individual successes. He considers his family his first team and describes his parents as “very supportive of everything their kids wanted to try- from surfing to playing in a rock band.” Tony tried tennis, baseball and basketball before he became interested in skateboarding. Tony got a sponsor and entered contests around the time that the professional National Skateboard Association was formed.  Tony Hawk was the first National champion when he was still in high school! Wealth and fame soon followed. At age nineteen he was considering retirement. He instead continued in the sport and began his own company. At twenty-seven Tony won competitions at the first ever X Games. One of his greatest achievements was to complete a trick called the 900-a two and one half turn in mid air. Tony is still involved with skateboarding today.  The book is a great introduction not only to Tony Hawk, but to the entire extreme sport of skateboarding.  Reader’s are given a short history of the sport, pictures and descriptions of skateboard tricks, a glossary and resource page.  Tween skaters will love this book!

Genre: Non-Fiction, Biography

Reading Level: 6.6 Interest level: Ages 9 to 14.

Night by Elie Wiesel

Night. by Elie Wiesel. Hill and Wang, 2006. 120 pages.

Review/Personal thoughts:  This is the story, the true story, of Wiesel’s account of his internment in German concentration camps during World War II when he was a teenager.   It is a graphic account of the horrors of man’s inhumanity to man.  This is not a horror story to entertain, but so that, as the author himself states, the world will never forget. Wiesel, his parents and his two sisters are loaded onto boxcars and taken to an undisclosed destination. The description of the train conditions were only a hint of the incomprehensible horrors that  would come. “The heat, the thirst, the stench, the lack of air, were all suffocating us.” They arrived at their destination, Birkenau, which no one had ever heard of.  Immediately men and boys were separated from women and girls. Wiesel writes, “I didn’t know that this was the moment in time and the place where I was leaving my mother and Tzipora forever.” The accounts of violence, humiliation, starvation and death is recounted in Wiesel’s powerful words.  Throughout the ordeal, Wiesel is with his father who becomes weaker and closer to death. Here is a teenager watching helplessly as his father literally is dying.  One of the prisoners gave Wiesel some advice, “In this place, it is every man for himself, and you cannot think of others. Not even your father. In this place, there is no such thing as father, brother, friend. Each of us lives and dies alone.”  This was the brutal reality of survival. This firsthand account will give older tweens a glimpse into the holocaust. It is a book that one will not forget and that is the author’s purpose.  Elie Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.

Genre: Non-Fiction, Autobiography

Reading Level: 4.8 Interest level: Ages 12 and up.

The Story of Anne Frank by Rachel A. Koestler-Grack

The Story of Anne Frank. by Rachel A. Koestler-Grack. Chelsea Clubhouse, 2004. 32 pages.

Review/Personal thoughts:  I don’t think that anyone would argue with the statement that Anne Frank was an “ordinary girl whose extraordinary diary inspired the world.”  In this book, tweens are given an introduction to the life of Anne Frank.  This book does not focus on the contents of her diary (which has been published in 67 languages), but on her life in Germany, the Netherlands and finally a German concentration camp. Anne was born on June 12, 1929 in Germany.  Her family was Jewish.  She was three years old when the leader of the Nazi Party, Adolf Hitler, became the ruler of Germany. Anne’s father was an astute businessman and quickly realized that the anti-Jewish laws Hitler began to enact were putting his family in danger and they fled to the safety of the Netherlands.  Things seemed safe and the family enjoyed life with Anne’s father starting a new successful business and Anne and her sister making many friends at school. Six years later the German army invaded the Netherlands and began enacting the same anti-Jewish laws that were in effect in Germany. Jews were stripped of rights and segregated. In 1942 a letter came for Anne’s sister Margo to report to the Nazi police to be sent to a German labor camp.  Anne’s father acted quickly and immediately moved his family into hiding in a secret room behind an office building where they remained for two years. It is in this setting that the bulk of Anne’s powerful diary was written. In 1944 the family was betrayed and the Nazi police captured the entire family and shipped them off to concentration camps.  The last time Anne saw her father was when they were separated at the camp.  The book goes on to tell the powerful story of what Anne’s fate was to be.   An excellent layout of graphics, photographs, and historical events of the time make this an outstanding introduction to the life of a courageous young girl.

Genre: Non-Fiction, Biography

Reading Level: 5.5 Interest level: Ages 8 to 11.