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Category: windows to history

  • Leonardo’s Horse

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    by

    Judy Butler
    in ,

    Leonardo’s Horse by Jean Fritz and Hudson Talbott (2001) is a masterpiece. Young readers will appreciate the reading level at grades 1 – 4. Middle and high schoolers can research the many references to Leonardo de Vinci, his endeavors, his contemporaries, and the setting in which he lived. This book condenses a huge amount of…

  • A Wire of Freedom

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    by

    Judy Butler
    in ,

    The timeless theme of freedom meanders through Emily Arnold McCully’s trilogy about Mirette and Bellini. In the first book, Mirette on the High Wire (1993), her young protagonist feels free when walking the wire. Perhaps she’s freed from the grueling domestic work she does in her mother’s boarding house. We never see Mirette at school…

  • Walls

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    by

    Judy Butler
    in , ,

    The Wall by Eve Bunting (1990) is an emotionally powerful story. A young child and his father search for a name on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. “The wall is black and shiny as a mirror. In it I can see Dad and me. I can see the bare trees behind us and the dark, flying…

  • Artistic Agony

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    by

    Judy Butler
    in ,

    The Painter and the Wild Swans by Claude Clement (1986) is a story about an artist’s existential struggle. Art is life. Life is art. They coexist in Teiji as a fight for survival as intense as any person’s hunt for food and shelter. Frederic Clement succeeds in painting this synchronicity. Only now, after reading the…

  • Flood Disasters

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    Judy Butler
    in , ,

    How does an author appeal to a young reader when the topic is about the volatile earth? Two picture books that came my way took care to soften the brutal reality of such trauma. Selvakumar Knew Better by Virginia Kroll (2006) tells the story of the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004 by featuring a family’s…

  • Portals into the Past

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    by

    Judy Butler
    in

    In Coal Country by Judith Hendershot (1987) led me to learn about a catastrophic mine explosion on March 16, 1940 at the Willow Grove #10 mine. Despite several references to it online, I could not find its location. I watched an interview with an elderly man who was a breaker boy and saw footage of…