The Voyage That Changed The World by Thekla Priebst

The Voyage That Changed The World tells  the remarkable story of the first crew to sail around the world.

The story begins with a spice called cloves or cengkih. Hundreds of years ago this spice grew only on five islands in the Moluccas, an archipelego located in the Indian Ocean. The Moluccas were known as "the Spice Islands". There, on five islands grew cloves. They were used to give food a distinctive flavour and also to preserve food and in medicines. They grow on tall trees, beginning as small buds. These buds are carefully picked by hand and dried. As they dry they turn from green to brown and the clove buds give off a very distinctive smell, "both sharp and sweet at the same time." 

Cloves along with many other spices eventually made their way to Europe via several maritime trade routes that tracked through East Asia, "through the islands of Indonesia, around India to the Middle East, where they crossed the Mediterraneean to reach the heart of Europe."  There were routes across land too, through Alexandria to Tunisia and on to Genoa, Italy.

Spices had been traded for millennia by "Greek, Roman, Arab, Persian, Indian, Javanese, Malay, and Chinese merchants along natural trade routes that span half the globe."  But in the late fifteenth century, spices became very precious and Europeans decide to find a direct route to the Spice Islands. The two countries most determined to claim the Spice Islands are Spain and Portugal and they choose different routes to explore. Portugal travels east reaching the southern tip of Africa (now called the Cape of Good Hope) in 1488. Spain travels west with Christopher Columbus claiming he had reached India, but actually landing in the Americas in 1492.  

In an attempt to resolve things, the two countries sign the Treaty of Tordesillas. All territories to the west of an imaginary line from the North Pole to the South Pole belong to Spain, while those to the east are claimed by Portugal.  The Portuguese win the race to the Spice Islands with Vasco da Gama reaching India in 1498 and Portuguese gaining control of the city of Malacca in 1511. But the question remains: Where is the dividing line between the poles on this side of the world? Who do the Spice Islands "belong" to?

In September 1519, King Carlos I (also known as Charles V Holy Roman Emperor) approves a Spanish expedition consisting of five ships to "find a passage for Spain through the new continent".  It is led by Fernao de Magalhaes (Ferdinand Magellan), a Portuguese navigator who had travelled twice to India. Among those accompanying Magellan are Juan Sebastian Elcano who is a boatswainand Enrique of Malacca, an interpreter and also Magellan's slave. Magellan as the Captain-General of the expedition is in charge of five ships: San Antonio, Concepcion, Victoria, Santiago, and Trinidad. It is an expedition that will ultimately reach the present day Philippines and . But it will be considered a failure by the Spanish king because Spain cannot lay claim to the Spice Islands. Magellan's calculations have determined that they have crossed the Treaty of Tordesillas line.  The Moluccas lie in territory claimed by the Portuguese! 

An attempt to form alliances and form trade agreements for Spain within the Philippine archipelago go badly when some of the indigenous peoples on the islands do like the Europeans. The ensuing conflict has devastating consequences for Magellan the remaining crew of his expedition.

Discussion

The Voyage That Changed The World is an engaging and informative account of the expedition led by Ferdinand Magellan to find a route to the Spice Islands. Magellan was generally considered to be the first to circumnavigate the globe but in fact that is not considered likely not to be true. He was murdered after attacking the Indigenous peoples on Cebu and never completed his voyage.

Author Thekla Priebst first presents the background story behind the desire to find a route to East Asia - spices! The driving force was the desire of Europeans to obtain the spices directly rather than through traders who brought the spices to Europe. At that time, knowledge of far off lands was very limited and the desire to explore was also a factor. From this point on, the focus is on the Magellan expedition and the main players in the expedition, the organization of the ships and crew are well explained. 

Besides telling the story of Magellan's expedition, Priebst also provides her readers with a wealth of information about topics related to the expedition. For example, there are separate features throughout the book on the various indigenous peoples Magellan and his crew encounterd: the Tupinabi on the eastern coast of Brazil, the Tehuelche of Patagonia, the peoples of Tierra del Fuego, Polynesian seafarers, and the CHamoru of the Marianas.

Throughout this account, the author explains how the Europeans of the late fifteenth century viewed their world and their place in it. The Doctrine of Discovery was an important part of this view - it was the belief that explorers could claim as their own, land that was already inhabited by people with their own language and culture. This belief would have far-reaching consequences for the indigenous peoples the Europeans encountered, consequences that are still felt today.

European explorers like Magellan did not respect the people they encountered. For example, Magellan wanted to bring back to Spain two Tehuelche men to prove they actually existed. However the Tehuelche were not willing to leave their land and so Magellan tricked them into boarding his ship and then imprisoned them. These men did not survive the journey to Spain. As Priebst writes, "...they saw the people they were encountering as items of interest rather than fellow human beings."

It was Magellan's attempts to create an alliance with the King of Cebu in April of 1521 that led to his murder. On a neighbouring island of Mactan, Datu Lapulapu rebelled against the Europeans and their influence. In an attempt to punish Lapulapu, Magellan attacked Mactan, believing he could easily subdue them, only to be killed during the battle on April 27, 1521.

For centuries Magellan was believed to have been the first to circumnavigate the globe however, historians now belief that honor may actually go to his slave and interpreter, Enrique. Magellan bought Enrique in 1511 and on Magellan's voyage, he travelled far enough to return to the land where his native language was spoken. 

The Voyage That Changed The World is filled with colourful and informative artwork, created digitally, and includes maps, charts and other graphics. Among the most compelling are two graphics whosing the number of men who began the expedition (240) and the number of surviving sailors who made it home to Spain (18). 

For those interested in the age of explorers, The Voyage That Changed The World is a must read! 

Image credit: Molucca map https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maluku_Islands_en.png

Book Details:

The Voyage That Changed The World by Thekla Priebst
Beverly, MA:  Wide Eye Editions     2025

79 pp.

The House On The Canal by Thomas Harding

A building located in the middle of Amsterdam next to a canal was referred to by Anne Frank as "the old house on the canal."  That house had it's beginnings long ago. 

In 1580, the land where the "tall, narrow house" would come to stand was part of a marshland filled with field mice and seagulls. In the 1600's people came to build a canal that had strong walls. In 1635, a stonemason built a brick house with a green door close to the canal. When he required more space, the stonemason built an annex at the back of the house. More homes were built next to the house, one with blue shutters, another with red shutters, as well as a church with bells that rang four times every hour. 

In 1653, the house was the home of a woman with twelve children. She had fled persecution because of her Christian beliefs.  The plague raged along the canal in 1709, but the woman and her family survived. She lived for many years there. The Great Frost came, freezing the canal, meaning that food and water could not be supplied to the people that lived hear the canal. Eventually a wealthy merchant and his wife moved into the rundown house, repainting and repairing the annex. Although they had no children there were parties and many of their friends visited. Eventually the merchant died and his wife moved out of the house. After many winters, the ground floor of the house became stables for horses. It soon became a place of business.

By 1880 the house on the canal was still used as a home with people living in both the front and the annex in the back. The area around the house and the canal smelled like rotten eggs. In 1884 a fire raged blistering the brick walls but firefighters saved the house. In the early 1900's the house once again became the home for a family, an ironmonger, his wife and children. The stage was set for the house to play an important part in a war that saw millions killed.

Discussion

The House On The Canal is a picture book that traces the history of the house that would become known as the Anne Frank House, so named because it was where Anne Frank and her family along with the van Pels family and a dentist hid from the Nazis during the occupation of Holland in World War II. In the back matter of the book, the author writes that the house was built on a canal, called the Prinsengracht (or Prince's Canal) by Dirk van Delft in 1635. He eventually added on to the rear of the house, an addition called the annex which would play a part in hiding Anne and seven others.

Although Harding doesn't mention them by name in his account, in the back matter he does identify the people mentioned: Baefje Bisschop was the woman with twelve children who found refuge in the home, the wealthy merchant was Isaac van Vleuten who moved into the house in 1740 with his wife Cornelia, the ironmonger was Alle Pieron who moved into the house in 1901.Of course many readers will know that the "...tall man in a fine suit" was Otto Frank and the "young girl with a sweet smile" was his daughter Anne.

Otto Frank moved his businesses into the house in 1940 but when the Nazis began rounding up the Jewish people in Amsterdam in 1942, he moved his family into the top three floors of the annex where they lived hidden for over two years. Sadly Anne and the other Jewish people were betrayed by an unknown person and sent to concentration camps. Only Otto would survive the war, returning to Amsterdam in 1945. Anne's diary had been recovered from the annex by two of Otto's employees, Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl. It was given to Otto upon his return. The house was bought by NY Berghaus who were convinced by Otto Frank to donate it. More than a million people visit the restored house annually.

Thomas Harding previously authored a picture book about a house his great-grandfather built outside of Berlin prior to World War II, exploring the unique history of that house and how his family lost and then regained it. In this latest offering, Harding explores the history of a better known house, the annex that was the hiding place of Anne Frank and her family during World War II. Readers are taken back to the very beginning, before the canal existed and before the house was built. The timeline approach, with each two page spread featuring a specific year, identified in the upper right corner of the right page, offers readers a coherent and easy to follow story. Readers can see how, over a period of centuries, a house can be used in many different ways: as a home for a family,  as a place of work and sometimes as a place of refuge. The simple text is accompanied by illustrations done in mixed media by illustrator, Britta Teckentrup.

The House On The Canal offers a unique and interesting way to introduce young readers to the story of Anne Frank. Although there is a photograph of the Annex taken in 1954, a more recent colour photograph of the house, along with a photograph of Anne Frank would have put a face to the name.

Book Details:

The House On The Canal by Thomas Harding
Somerville, Mass.: Candlewich Studio     2025

Spooky Lakes by Geo Rutherford

Spooky Lakes by Geo Rutherford features twenty-five strange and mysterious lakes found on planet Earth. The book opens with an introduction to limnology, the study of lakes. "A lake is typically a large body of water surrounded by land." They are found in all regions of our planet and can vary in size, depth, shape, and colour. Lakes can be created by glaciers, dormant volcanoes, earthquakes, meteorites and dams. A second chapter, titled Lake Facts offers seventeen fascinating facts about lakes including that Canada has the most lakes of any country at almost two million!

The lakes profiled begin with Lake Superior, famous for its violent storms, one of which sank the Edmund Fitzgerald in November of 1975. One feature of Lake Superior is its cold, fresh water that is bacteria-free, meaning that shipwrecks often are in excellent condition. It also means that those crew who are trapped within the ships, do not decay and can be seen floating inside.

Lake Karachay in Russia is one example of a lake that is contaminated with radioactive waste from a nuclear facility, making it deadly. The Mayak facility located near the lake, exploded in 1957, spewing highly radioactive material into the surrounding environment. Today the lake is a "...dry nuclear waste storage facility" having been filled with tons of concrete blocks, rocks and dirt. 

Perhaps one of the most fascinating lakes is Lake Maracaiho, located in Venezuela, South America. This lake "...is illuminated by thousands of lightning strikes" almost every night of the year. There can be as many as twenty-eight lightning strikes per minute during the frequent storms over the lake. The geography and climate are the primary factors which result in a large number of storms forming over the lake.

Lake Nyos is a very deep volcanic crater lakes in the African country of Cameroon. On August 22, 1986, over seventeen hundred people, their pets and livestock were found dead in the area adjacent to the lake. It was determined that a massive cloud of carbon dioxide gas, from a limnic explosion, raced down the crater sides of Lake Nyos, killing every living thing in its path including insects.

Lake Vostok can be found more than two miles beneath the ice sheet in Antarctica. However, this lake is not frozen! This is due to the immense pressure of the overlying ice sheet. This means that water remains a liquid at temperatures lower than its freezing point of 32 F. It is also believed that the lake is heated from below by a geothermal vent. The lake was discovered by the Russian military and there is now a Russian research station over it. A borehole was drilled to the lake reaching the water surface in 2012. It is not known if sampling the water of Lake Vostok resulted in contamination of its pristine waters.

These are just five of the remarkable lakes profiled in Spooky Lakes.

Discussion

Spooky Lakes profiles twenty-five unique lakes providing a detailed overview of this geographical feature that is so common on our planet. 

What is a "spooky" take on many unusual lakes, is also a fascinating and fact-filled read.  There are lakes created by glaciation such as Lake Superior, lakes that are extremely toxic such as Lake Nyos. There are lava lakes such Mount Nyiragongo Lava Lake, lakes of pitch or natural asphalt like those in La Brea, Trinidad, lakes polluted from nuclear waste such as Lake Karachay, and lakes created by atomic blasts. There are lakes formed from rock slides like Lake Kaindy in Kazakhstan which features a well-preserved submerged forest. 

Rutherford explains many interesting science concepts in Spooky Lakes. For example, she describes how human bodies come to be preserved in the cold, fresh water of Lake Superior. Readers will learn why some lava flows faster due to a lower silica content. In describing Yellowstone Hot Springs, the author explains how the hot springs are part of a the Yellowstone Supervolcano complex.

There are also many cultural references included where relevant. For example, Pitch Lake in Trinidad is believed to be "...a site of mythical punishment" by the Indigenous Arawah people. The section on Lake Guatavita explains the origin of the legend of El Dorado, the mythical city of gold that the Spanish were so determined to find.

Spooky Lakes is richly illustrated by author Geo Rutherford, who hand-painted them using gouache on watercolour paper. A fun twist to this book is the placement of tiny ghosts throughout many of the illustrations, which the author encourages her readers to look for! The author is an American artist, and TikToker whose mother holds a Ph.D. in geology, hence her first name!

Although the illustrations are colourful and simply wonderful, it would have been interesting to see photographs of these lakes where possible. Nevertheless, Spooky Lakes, with its catchy title, lovely artwork and large format size is likely to engage many young readers.

Book Details:

Spooky Lakes by Geo Rutherford

New York: Abrams Books For Young Readers     2024
96 pp

Stealing Little Moon: The Legacy of the American Indian Boarding Schools by Dan Sasuweh Jones

In Stealing Little Moon, author Dan Sasuweh Jones explores the legacy of the American Indian Boarding Schools within .

Chapter One "Kill the Indian In Him" explores how the Indian residential boarding school school system came about. Jones traces the origin of the boarding schools to the early mission schools set up by the Spanish in the 1600's. This was followed by the establishment of Harvard University by the British and then the addition of the Indian College to bring Christianity to the surrounding Native people. The idea was to expose Indian students to English ways and have them bring this knowledge back to their tribes.

The end of the Civil War and the migration west of "settlers", led to war between the U.S. government and the Indians living on the land. The U.S. government took away the ancestral lands of the Indians and forcibly removed them. But the idea to educate Indian children to white ways, making it easier to assimilate the next generation, came from the work of U.S. Army Captain, Richard Henry Pratt. His successful forced assimilation program on captured Indian warriors, led him to design one for Indian children.

Pratt's first off-registration school was Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which took in only young children and opened in 1879. It was located on an old military base near Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Pratt's motto came to be "Kill the Indian in him, and save the man." The goal was to mold Indian children so that they "could become part of white society", leaving behind their own cultural traditions, thus solving what the U.S. government had termed "the Indian problem." 

The first group of children were taken from the Rosebud and Pine Ridge reservations in South Dakota, travelling fifteen hundred miles to Carlisle, arriving on October 6, 1879. The children were "ripped from their families" and entered a strange world that was run like a military institution. "Carlisle required the Indian students to cut their long braids, to take 'American' names, to dress in drab U.S. military uniforms to speak only English, and to march wherever they went around campus...."

Before and after photographs show the changes in the young Indians' appearances. These pictures along with those of "classroom experiences, concerts, sports, and happy interactions with the staff." were used to promote Pratt's project. Chemawa Indian School opened in 1880, taking in children from the Puyallup Indians from Puget Sound in Washington. The number of schools soon mushroomed, with boarding schools in New Mexico, Nebraska, Arizona, California and Kansas. The children were forcibly taken and if families refused, the government withheld rations, clothing and even jailed fathers. Some tried to hide their children but few escaped.

In Chapter "Two Little Moon There Are No Stars Tonight" the author tells the story of his grandmother, Little Moon There Are No Stars Tonight and how she came to the Indian boarding school, Chilocco, which played a large part in his own family history. The school that educated the author's family members was built on the banks of the Chilocco Creek, "in the middle of empty, tall grass prairie." One hundred children from the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, and Kowa tribes arrived in 1884. Author Dan Sasuweh Jones' grandmother's family, the Little Cooks, were members of the Ponca tribe. His grandmother's name in Ponca was Little Moon There Are No Stars Tonight but she came to be known as Elizabeth Little Cook. Little Moon's father (the author's great-grandfather) was Sam Little Cook. He was Head Chief of their clan, called the Rain Clan. Her mother was Esther Broken Jaw Little Cook. There were six children in the family ranging in age from four to eighteen. They included daughters Creth, Annie, Fannie, and Elizabeth (Little Moon), and sons David and Henry.

Life before the boarding school for Little Moon was simple and slow. Her family had built a farm and they lived by "...eating foods that were either home grown or harvested."  They had cattle, chickens and pigs. There was no electricity or plumbing. The family was close-knit, practicing their Ponca customs and values. This all changed in 1885, when Little Moon was forcibly taken from her Ponca family by the Indian agent. She was four years old. Sam Little Cook, noticing that there were intruders near his home, ordered his wife Esther to hide their children. However, the Indian Agent was determined that four-year-old Elizabeth was to attend the boarding school. The women accompanying the Indian Agent saw where little Elizabeth had been hidden, took her, and forcibly placed the screaming little girl into the wagon. 

For Elizabeth the trauma was just beginning. She along with the other children in the wagon were taken to the community of White Eagle. White Eagle was set up like a Ponca summer/winter encampment but instead of a semicircle of buffalo-hide teepees, there were wooden homes. The community also had a sawmill, a trading post, and in the middle a three-storey school. Initially this school had been for Ponca orphans, but now children like Elizabeth, who had families, were forced to attend.

Once in the school, Elizabeth underwent a physical transformation to start the process of losing her Ponca identity: her braids were cut, her clothes changed and she was stripped of any personal possession like a small medicine bag. At White Eagle, at least her family could still visit her. But then one day, Elizabeth, along with all the other students were packed off far way to Chilocco. It was 1886, and the school had already been open for two years. Elizabeth Little Cook, formerly Little Moon was the first of four generations of her family to be connected intimately to the Quaker boarding school, either as a student or an employee. Chilocco would forever change Little Moon and her family in ways they did not anticipate and which were to affect the generations to come.

Discussion

Stealing Little Moon is a long overdue book, written for younger readers, about the Indian boarding school era in the United States.  Stealing Little Moon covers four generations of author Dan Sasuweh Jones' American Indian family during what is now referred to as the boarding school era, from 1884 to 1980. During the boarding school era, U.S. government agents forcibly seized young Indian children and transported them, far from their families, to boarding schools. The purpose of his book is to "...tell their stories and those of my own family members." It also "...explores what it was like to be an American Indian child during the boarding school years...as well as the depth and richness of our heritage." 

As he traces his family history through the boarding school era, Jones also provides many details about the schools themselves, the relationship between the American Indians and the U.S. Government, the significant contributions of American Indians to American culture and society, and the struggle for equality, justice, reparation and healing.

He begins by offering readers background information on the boarding schools. "The network of government schools was designed to wipe out American Indian culture and replace it with white ways...Forced to leave their families to attend the schools, children had to disown their language and rituals and they were brainwashed into adopting white ways. Whether or not they obeyed the rules, the children were abused emotionally and physically by the administrators and teachers. After they returned home and married, many passed on this abuse to the next generation." In effect, the function of these schools was "cultural genocide": stripping "Indian children of their heritage and cultural practices."

Jones outlines the origin of the Indian boarding schools from the Spanish mission schools in the early 1600's to the establishment of the Indian College at Harvard, to bring Christianity to the native peoples of the Americas. In the post-Civil War era, Indians were stripped of their ancestral lands and forcibly removed for European "settlers". The idea to educate Indian children to white ways, making it easier to assimilate the next generation, came from the work of U.S. Army Captain, Richard Henry Pratt. His successful forced assimilation program on captured Indian warriors, led him to design one for Indian children. Pratt's first off-reservation school was Carlisle Indian Industrial School which took in only young children and opened in 1879. His motto was "Kill the Indian in him, and save the man." 

Dan Sasuweh Jones' family story is intimately connected to that of the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School, built in Indian Territory which eventually became north-central Oklahoma. The purpose of this school and other boarding schools was that of forcing "young Indian children to abandon their heritage." His grandmother Elizabeth (Little Moon), his mother Velma Pensoneau (Full Moon)  and her siblings, Edward, Otilia, Francis and Daniel all attended. Jones' sisters Donna and Esther,  his brother Mike  and his first cousin Charmain as well as many other relatives experienced Chilocco. Although the author did not attend Chilocco, he worked there for many years. Jones shows how with each generation, the boarding schools improved and the experience was less traumatic, but the goal of achieving cultural assimilation was still successful despite many reforms. 

Many parts of Stealing Little Moon are difficult to read. The passage in Chapter Two Little Moon There Are No Stars Tonight describing the forced abduction of four-year-old Little Moon is truly heartbreaking. Jones highlights just how powerless American Indian parents were to protect their children from the Indian agents and how determined the government was to take them, even to the point of starving families and jailing fathers. In Chapter 6 "Hateful Things", the acts of unkindness, the punishment and abuse of Indian children for cultural slips, bad manners, disobedience, imprudence and bed wetting are shocking. Jones describes the use of handcuffs, lockup rooms, whips, straps, and even the threat of being sent to the Hiawatha Insane Asylum for Indians. Many survivor stories are recounted. These "...punishments passed from generation to generation. Children who had learned abusive ways at boarding school used them on their own children." In this way, the trauma of the boarding schools passed from one generation to the next.

One very informative and interesting aspect of Stealing Little Moon is the author's in-depth explanation of some Ponca cultural practices and how the loss of them had a profound affect on the Ponca children. When Indian children arrived at a boarding school their hair, which was often braided, was cut. Jones' explains, "The act of braiding our hair is filled with prayer. With each braid we are communicating with Wa KoN Da (God) and asking for mercy, healing, safety, clarity, and forgiveness for our infractions..." Later on he explains, "Through time, many have believed that hair is cut only under high-stress conditions, for instance when a loved one dies. It is a symbol of mourning. Long hair that is cut then disconnects a person from the community for one year, while it grows back. White school administrators may have thought that they were only changing the children's fashion. But for Elizabeth and the children with her, having their hair cut represented death." 

Another practice in the boarding schools was the forbidding of Indian children from speaking in their mother tongue. Jones writes, "For every people on Earth, language is our identity and our connection to the world...Your own language carried ancient meanings and connections to Earth and all life..." Like many societies, the Ponca had an oral tradition that was a significant part of their culture. "Lost with language would also be their stories. Some stories hold the key to passing down our tribal values and ethics. They tell Ponca children who they are, what we expect from life, and how we interact with one another. They tell us the history of our people and what we believe in...But the greatest connection to our language and our selfhood is knowledge of our mythology...These stories contain many pearls of wisdom, all told in continuing narratives that are funny, tragic, mystifying, dangerous, and beautiful, oh so beautiful." Ironically, it would be an American Indian language that would help the Americans during World War II, the very language they worked so hard to destroy.

Besides outlining the many abuses that occurred in the American Indian boarding schools, Jones also focuses on the efforts from the 1950's onward to reclaim pride in American Indian identity and to reclaim Indian cultural practices like the Sun Dance which was once outlawed.  Paralleling the Black civil rights movement, the American Indian movement advocated for better education, housing and healthcare, the restoration of stolen Indian land and the repeal of unfair policies and treaties. 

Dan Sasuweh Jones' writing is passionate, rich in facts and details. Although he never attended an American Indian boarding school, the boarding school story is his and his family's: its intergenerational impact extending down from his grandmother and mother and her siblings to his own generation. As with many American Indian families, the struggle to reclaim their cultural heritage and identity has been challenging and ongoing. 

Jones includes many black and white photographs and also many sidebars which offer addition information on important people and events. Features include the Ponca Trail of Tears, Ponca values, the Returned, Runaways, Code Talkers, Red Power is Born, Wounded Knee Massacre 1890 and many more.  Especially poignant are the before and after photographs of various American Indian children. The before photographs show young children, proud and dignified in their traditional clothing with long hair in sharp contrast to the after photographs taken in the residential school, where an air of sadness permeates their bearing, hair shorn and wearing a uniform.  

Stealing Little Moon is both heartbreaking and hopeful: it is a difficult read. What was done to American Indian children and their families is truly difficult to comprehend but Stealing Little Moon is part of truth telling that will hopefully lead to healing and reconciliation.

Book Details:

Stealing Little Moon: The Legacy of the American Indian Boarding Schools by Dan Sasuweh Jones
New York: Scholastic Focus      2024
284 pp.

Charles Darwin's On The Origin of Species by Dr. Michael Leach and Dr. Meriel Lland

This oversize nonfiction picture book explores Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and his ideas about the natural world that were published in his book, On The Origin of Species.

In this book, evolution is defined as "the way that living things here on Earth have changed and continue to change." It "explains why there are so many different kinds of plants and animals." This explanation comes from Charles Darwin who described his ideas in his book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, published in 1859. 

This nonfiction picture book sets out to describe how naturalist Charles Darwin came to develop the idea of evolution and natural selection and explain his "big idea".

After identifying some of the great scientific thinkers in the late 1700's and early 1800's, the authors describe the early life of Charles Robert Darwin who was born in 1809. His love of studying the natural world led him to leave the study of medicine and enroll in courses to become an Anglican minister. He obtained the position of a naturalist on the HMS Beagle and journeyed to the Galapagos Islands, off the coast of South America.

 

In 1835, Darwin studied the wildlife on the various islands of the Galapagos, making records and collecting samples. When he returned home to England, Darwin married Emma Wedgwood in January, 1839. They had ten children. Over the next sixteen years, Darwin came to develop a theory as to how species change, by passing on small variations that made them better adapted to their environment. These traits eventually became common to all members of that species. This process was named "natural selection" by Darwin. Another British man, Alfred Russel Wallace also came to have a similar theory and sent his idea to Darwin.

In 1858, their idea of the theory of natural selection was presented at a scientific meeting in London. Wallace admitted that this idea was first Darwin's. This radical idea was very controversial leading to many public debates. Darwin published his theory in a book titled, On the Origin of Species in 1859. In 1871 he further developed his ideas and published a book on the evolution of humans called The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. Because Darwin considered humans as part of the animal kingdom, he believed humans shared a common ancestor with apes.

Darwin continued his thinking and research all his life, writing fourteen books and corresponding with many people regarding his ideas. He died in 1882 and is buried in Westminster Abbey, London.

From this point on, examples of natural selection in action are featured. Other concepts such as "common descent", "survival of the fittest", "the struggle for life", and sexual selection are presented. How island life forms unique organisms, Darwin's tree of life and the interdependence of species are also discussed. The authors also incorporate pages about convergent evolution, the fossil record, the rise of birds, plate tectonics and how this has affected life on Earth, and some of Darwin's ideas that ultimately proved to be wrong.

Discussion

Charles Darwin's On The Origin of Species offers young readers a short biography of Charles Darwin, the British naturalist who posed the theory of evolution and natural selection. Darwin's ideas on how natural selection works to help species adapt better to their environment and his theory of evolution - how life on Earth may have developed over hundreds of millions of years are also discussed.

This book begins by offering some key definitions about evolution, stating that "People and species of plants and animals also change bit by bit over many generations. These processes are gradual and are the basis of evolution - or how living things change over time."  This definition is somewhat vague and doesn't explain what Charles Darwin's theory of evolution has come to embody today. The Merriam-Webster definition is probably more accurate: "the scientific theory explaining the appearance of new species and varieties through the action of various biological mechanisms (as natural selection or genetic mutation)"

It's important for children's science books to strive to be accurate. Darwin brilliantly recognized that living organisms adapt to small changes in their environment so they can better survive. He was able to  describe this with his detailed observations of various animals on the Galapagos. Drs Leach and Lland do an excellent job of presenting this evidence by describing Darwin's finches from the Galapagos and the rainforest frogs in Thailand. 

But Darwin also had another part of his theory which the authors describe as  "Evolution also helps us to understand how groups of animals and plants become extinct, and how new groups emerged - including humans."  In other words, Darwin believed that evolution could explain how new species come about, a process he believed happened gradually, through small changes over a vast period of time. To prove this many, transitional forms must be found to show the development from one species to a completely new one. As Leach and Lland do mention, transitional fossils are not common, making such proof difficult. They present the evolution of whales from a land ancestor  called Indohyus as one example and also the belief today, that birds are the descendants of dinosaurs based on the discovery of dinosaur fossils with feathers, and what is considered an intermediary, Archaeopteryx. 

Leach and Lland also present some of the problems Darwin considered but was unable to solve during his lifetime. One was how plants and animals passed on their characteristics to their offspring. We now know since the discovery of DNA in 1953, that traits are passed on through segments of DNA called genes which are inherited from the parents of an organism. Genes describe protein chains, amino acid by amino acid.  During reproduction DNA is copied but often the duplication is not perfect. These flaws lead to mutations. Most major mutations are fatal, as the work of the German geneticists Christiane Nusslein-Volhard and Eric Wieschaus demonstrated. When Darwin posed evolution, he knew nothing about DNA, amino acids, proteins and inheritance. Had he known, would he have believed that random mutations that occurred early enough in development to affect the body plan of the organism - could drive macro-evolution? Today, many microbiologists and geneticists understand that minor mutations do not create significant evolutionary change as Darwin proposed. And major mutations are usually fatal to an organism. Leach and Lland describe DNA and confidently state that these mutations which they describe as "faults" are what "...create the variants that drive evolution." They do not explore the question that microbiology presents regarding evolution: since genes contain information that is coded in various combinations of the twenty amino acids, where did that biochemical information initially originate? Did the information come from random mutations? Or from some other source? 

The second problem Darwin couldn't solve was "how a species could appear in different places around the Earth." We now know that the Earth is a dynamic system in which the crust is made up of  tectonic plates that are constantly moving. The continents as we currently know them were arranged very differently in the past, into one supercontinent called Gondwana.

One interesting spread in the book is titled The Slow March of Evolution in which Earth's history is presented in the form of a twenty-four hour clock instead of using the geologic time scale such as Cambrian, Ordovician etc . The appearance of different forms of life are assigned a time ( for example, 04.20 First Single Cell Life appears). One issue with Darwin's theory of evolution is how to explain things like the incredible emergence of life at the beginning of the Cambrian Period - known as the "Cambrian explosion." Using the clock instead of the geologic time scale means this "explosion of new life forms" is not as readily apparent.

Charles Darwin's On The Origin of Species offers an overview on the topic of evolution that may encourage young readers to further explore the ideas featured here.  This book could have been made much more engaging with the use of photographs of some of the major characters such as Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, and Samuel Wilberforce, photographs of the Galapagos Islands and of the unique animals such as the long nosed horn frog mentioned in the book, as well as the use of maps and the geologic time scale. There is a small glossary at the back which could have been expanded. In addition, there is no information offered on the authors or their credentials. 

Book Details:

Charles Darwin's On The Origin of Species by Dr. Michael Leach and Dr. Meriel Lland

London: Arcturus Publishing Ltd.     2024

64 pp.

The Mona Lisa Vanishes by Nicholas Day

The Mona Lisa Vanishes tells the story of the most remarkable art heist in the early twentieth century.

The story begins first, long ago in Florence in 1503 with the portrait of a young wife and mother, Lisa Gherardini by Leonardo da Vinci, who named the painting Mona Lisa. Five hundred years later, in Paris, France on Monday August 21, 1911 a man who has hidden all night in the Louvre would pull off the heist of the century. He had come to the vast museum on Sunday like any other visitor but when the museum was closing he didn't leave. Instead, he hid himself in closet among the easels and paint boxes. 

He knew it was possible to hide in the Louvre because a few months earlier, a French journalist who believed the Louvre's security was lacking hid himself overnight in the sarcophagus of an Egyptian king. He then published his experience.

The storage closet the thief had hidden in overnight was near the Salon Carre where the most valuable artworks like those from Titian, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci were displayed.  The man emerged from the closet wearing a white smock similar to that of the Louvre maintenance workers. The paintings in the Louvre were not locked down because it was assumed no one would dare steal them. However, they were hung in a specific way that required some knowledge as to how to remove them. The thief had this knowledge and quickly removed the painting from the Salon Carre and slipped into the stairwell. There he removed the Mona Lisa from its antique frame and glass covering. Unlike most paintings, the Mona Lisa was painted on three slabs of wood joined together and it was heavy. To hide it, the thief placed the Mona Lisa under his white smock. After struggling to get out of the stairwell's locked door, he escaped into the Paris morning, taking the Mona Lisa and the doorknob.

At first no one realized the Mona Lisa had been stolen. It was considered inconceivable that anyone would attempt this. The workmen who had walked through the Salon Carre only an hour earlier that Monday morning, now saw a blank space on the wall. But they believed the Mona Lisa couldn't be stolen so they did nothing. Even on Tuesday morning when Brigadier Maximilien Alphonse Paupardin, the guard in charge of the Salon Carre, noticed the Mona Lisa missing, he assumed not that it had been stolen, but that the Louvre photographers had it. At this time, the Louvre was photographing its collection and the photographers often removed and returned paintings without telling anyone.

Louis Beroud, a painter who enjoyed painting the copyists as they worked in the Louvre, would be the man who discovered the Mona Lisa was missing. Beroud arrived at the Louvre with the intention of painting a girl working at the Mona Lisa. He was told by Brigadier Paupardin that the painting was being photographed. However, when the painting didn't show up, Beroud became impatient and asked Paupardin to find out when the Mona Lisa would return to the Salon Carre. But when Paupardin spoke to the photographers in the Louvre studio, they were puzzled and did not know what he was talking about.

With Theophile Homolle, the director of the Louvre in Mexico, a panicked Paupardin informed the curator of Egyptian antiquities, Georges Benedite. However, Benedite believed the Mona Lisa was simply somewhere in the Louvre. A search did not find the painting and Georges Benedite was forced to call in the Paris police. Soon all of Paris knew the Mona Lisa was gone. What was the heist of the century would capture the attention of Parisians, French citizens and the world for months and remain unsolved for two years.

Discussion

The Mona Lisa Vanishes is "...a story about how a strange, small portrait became the most famous painting in history...about a shocking theft and a bizarre recovery." But as Nicholas Day aptly demonstrates, "...it is also the story of another way of looking at the world --clearly, plainly, without assumptions or expectations."  - the way the painting's creator, Leonardo da Vinci did. This is in contrast to the way the French police viewed their world, and therefore how they investigated the theft of the Mona Lisa.

After introducing the theft of the Mona Lisa, Day takes his readers back into the past, to the story of how the Mona Lisa came to be painted. It is a story that begins with Leonardo da Vinci, born at the height of the Renaissance in 1452, in Vinci. Leonardo is sent to apprentice with Andrea del Verrocchio, a Florentine painter and sculptor whom he soon surpasses in ability. His angel in the painting, The Baptism of Christ was so sublime that Verrocchio quit painting. Leonardo develops a new technique called sfumato in which the artist blends objects and people rather than outlining them in paintings. Unfortunately, Leonardo is often unable to finish works he is commissioned. He eventually would receive the commission to paint Lisa Gherardini, the wife of  Francesco Del Giocondo, a successful silk merchant and trader. His problem is that Leonardo is not just a painter but an observer of the world.

From entries in his notebooks, it is evident that he is obsessed with the world around him. His mind is on fire with questions and the quest to find answers through observation and study. This information is not necessary for his art, but this mindset means it is almost impossible to finish the commissions he receives, including the Mona Lisa. However, "...it means he sees the world without being blinded by what he thinks it is already going to be. He doesn't have assumptions about what something is or what it means. He doesn't leap to conclusions. His highest values are observations and experience..." As Day aptly demonstrates, this is in marked contrast to the way the Paris police proceed in their attempt to recover the Mona Lisa.

Interwoven with the story of Leonardo, his life and his painting, is the story of the Paris police's inability to solve the theft and recover  the Mona Lisa. Solving crimes is new to police work in the early twentieth century. Louis Lepine, head of the Paris police had begun standardizing police procedures. Helping him was Alphonse Bertillon, a pioneer in the new field of forensics. Bertillon, a temperamental man, had developed a method of identifying someone using body measurements - known as anthropometry. His system, used throughout the world, was difficult to implement consistently. A newer technique of fingerprinting to identify a person was just coming into practice. Bertillon had two important leads in the Mona Lisa heist: a fingerprint lifted from the glass pane of the painting, and the knowledge that the thief likely worked in the Louvre.

However, unlike Leonardo da Vinci, Lepine and Bertillon did not have an open mind, instead working on assumptions. "It was the opposite of observation, the opposite of how Leonardo would have wanted the Mona Lisa theft investigated. Unlike Leonardo, Bertillon and Lepine didn't start with the world. They started with what they assumed the world to be." Lepine assumed that because the crime was not a bloody, violent one, it meant that the heist was the work of a "superior class of thief." Lepine was looking for either a professional gang or a consummate professional thief like Adam Worth. One theory held that a rich American had paid a professional thief to steal the Mona Lisa. In 1911, many Americans who had made their wealth during the Guilded Age were eager to showcase that new wealth and to do so they purchased the art of famous painters from Europe.  It was because they worked from assumptions and theories like this, rather than observations, that Lepine and Bertillon were unable to solve the heist.

The Mona Lisa Vanishes is not just a story about the theft of the Mona Lisa, but a biography of the the great Renaissance master, Leonardo da Vinci. Day also explores the world of the high Renaissance, while contrasting it with society and the art world in the early twentieth century. Readers will also learn how the Mona Lisa heist changed the public's perception of art and artists .Day's account is informative and definitely engaging, as he weaves his narrative back and forth between Leonardo's life leading to the painting of the Mona Lisa and the desperate attempts to solve the heist in the twentieth century. 

There are black and white oil on paper illustrations that will appeal to younger readers. However, inclusion of photographs, for example the Mona Lisa and the Louvre, of Pablo Picasso, Alphonse Bertillon and Vincenzo Peruggia would have added significantly to Day's telling. Other times, an image of a painting being discussed would have been very helpful. For example, Day writes about Pablo Picasso's painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and how this painting changed art, beginning a new movement in modern art. Without an image to consider, readers are left to imagine what Day is explaining, or to use Google. A map of Italy and France, showing the location of Florence and the Louvre would also have been useful.

Day does include an extensive list of sources at the back, confirming what readers will most definitely already know, that The Mona Lisa Vanishes is a well-researched book about a heist that is largely forgotten outside the art world. Highly recommended for readers of all ages.

Book Details:

The Mona Lisa Vanishes by Nicholas Day
New York: Random House Studio      2023
278 pp.

Extra Life. The Astonishing Story of How We Doubled Our Lifespan by Steven Johnson

"The average person born in the United States a century ago could expect to live a little more than forty years. Today that number is just below eighty years. And Americans are four times more likely to live into their hundreds than they were a few decades ago." 

In Extra Life, science author Steven Johnson explores the many reasons why this is so beginning with the discovery of a way to vaccinate against the speckled monster, as smallpox was sometimes called. In Chapter 1, Johnson delves into the earliest history of how mankind worked to defeat the scourge of smallpox. 

In Chapter Two, solving the mystery of cholera, a disease common in the crowded cities of the nineteenth century, which killed millions.  In this chapter, Johnson focuses on the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak. 

Chapter 3 explores the efforts of W.E.B. Du Bois, a civil rights activist and author to improve the lives of Black Americans. Du Bois mapped data in an area of Philadelphia called the Seventh Ward, that was the city's largest Black community. His research demonstrated that African Americans were "dying at a rate about 5 percent higher than their white neighbors." Du Bois showed that this shortened life expectancy was due to poor living conditions, a consequence of the way American society was organized.

The pasteurization of milk is discussed in Chapter 4. In the United States, drinking a glass of milk in the 19th century could kill you, especially if you were a child. As cities grew larger, providing safe milk became a serious problem without refrigeration. Johnson goes into detail on how many cities had large herds of cows, and the practices to produce large quantities of milk that ended up killing children. Louis Pasteur's discovery that heating liquids killed off germs was only the beginning. It would be a half century later before pasteurization was a standard practice. But it's implementation lowered the death rate in children.

In Chapter 5, Beyond-The-Placebo-Effect, the regulation and testing of new drugs is examined. Many new drugs were never tested and only pulled off shelves when there were deaths. It would be well into the 20th century before RCTs and other practices were implemented to ensure drug testing and efficacy.

In Chapter 6, the discovery and impact of antibiotics is detailed while Chapter 7 delves into the development of safety features in cars, as automobiles became the predominant mode of transportation. Chapter 8, Feed the World explores the decline of famine due to our ability to produce ammonium nitrate (a compound in artificial fertilizer) and to mass-produce meat protein. In Chapter 9, Johnson reviews all of the amazing innovations that have increased human life expectancy as well as suggesting that we need to continue working and discovering new ways to improve health and quality of life.

Discussion

Extra Life offers younger readers a shorter version of Johnson's book of the same name. In this version of Extra Life, Johnson provides summaries of the same major innovations that improved quality of life, health care and safety, that he explored in his book for adult readers. In considering these innovations, Johnson delves deeper into the backstory, either identifying unsung heroes or exploring how such innovations became a matter of public policy.

One such unsung hero was Frances Oldham Kelsey who refused to approve the use of thalidomide as a sleeping pill in the United States, thus saving tens of thousands of babies from being born with malformed limbs. Another little known hero was Nathan Straus, a German immigrant to America, who was deeply concerned about child mortality and who was determined to provide a supply of safe milk to young children. He not only funded pasteurization plants but fought to have unpasteurized milk outlawed. 

An example of how Johnson delves deeper into the backstory is the story of the development of the smallpox vaccination. In Extra Life, readers will learn about Lady Mary Montagu, who contracted smallpox at the age of twenty-five and survived to travel with her husband to the Ottoman Empire in 1716. There she learned about a custom of exposing children to smallpox - a procedure now known as variolation. It was this technique, brought to England by Montagu that allowed Edward Jenner to develop his first vaccination for smallpox. As Johnson writes, "On the one hand, we have the satisfying narrative of brilliant Edward Jenner, inventing vaccination on one day in 1796/ On the other, we have a much more complicated story, where part of an idea emerges halfway around the world and migrates from culture to culture through word of mouth, until a perceptive and influential young woman takes note of it and imports it to her home country, where it slowly begins to take root, ultimately allowing a country doctor to make a key improvement on the technique after decades of using on his own patients."

One of the main points Johnson makes about the innovations that contributed to increasing our lifespan, is that these are often not just the work of one "genius" or brilliant scientist, but often a collaborative effort. A perfect example of this is the discovery of penicillin, which is attributed to Robert Fleming. However, the story is much more complicated than that and as Johnson writes, "The triumph of penicillin is actually one of the great stories of international multidisciplinary collaboration. It is a story of a network, not an eccentric genius. Fleming was a member of that network, but only one of many. He seemed to have not entirely grasped the true potential of what he had stumbled upon."

It's clear from Johnson's book, that the innovations he highlights have made significant strides in lengthening lives around the globe. And he encourages his readers to be the next generation in this constant goal, of improving lives. Extra Life is engaging, informative and filled with many interesting but little-known stories that make it a wonderful read. 

Johnson includes a section on Recommended Reading, Notes for each of the chapters, and a Bibliography. This well-written, short book is highly recommended for young readers who are interested in medical history, and public health. 

Book Details:

Extra Life. The Astonishing Story of How We Doubled Our Lifespan by Steven Johnson
New York: Viking Life      2023
121 pp.

Alone: the journeys of three young refugees by Paul Tom

In Alone, readers will explore the real-life stories of three young refugees as they journey alone to the safety of another country. 

Ashfin is thirteen-years-old and lives in Iran. In the summer he and his family often slept on the roof of their house because it was so hot. While his country has been at war, it is only now that it has come to his city. Now instead of spending nights on the roof, they hide in basement with the lights off. Afshin can't wait to become a soldier as he feels he is a superhero. War seems exciting to him. But his parents have other ideas: they decide to send him away to Canada. 

Thirteen-year-old Alain lives in Bujumbura, Burundi with his two older brothers, Igor and Camille and his mother who is a businesswoman. His father is often away as he is in the army.  One day Alain learns that his father has been arrested and is being questioned by the authorities. His brothers and his mother are deeply frightened. They begin to get threatening phone calls and letters, and their house is watched at night by men on motorcycles. So Alain's family decides to flee.

Sixteen-year-old Patricia lived with her mother in a shipping container after her father abandoned them. Patricia wasn't able to attend school because she had to work with her mother so they could make enough money to be able to eat. Eventually, she was sent to live with her father's sister but when her parents reconciled she returned to live with them.

When she turned sixteen Patricia signed up to play softball and found herself attracted to another girl on the team. Eventually her secret comes out, horrifying her parents. If other people find out, Patricia could go to jail and her family will be persecuted. So as the news spreads, her parents make arrangements for Patricia to travel to New York to stay with her uncle for a supposed "softball tournament". However, this is a one-way trip.

For all three young people, their journeys will be complicated and dangerous. They will suffer loneliness, separation and poverty but like many refugees, they will also work hard, and persevere. 

Discussion

Alone is poignant account of three young refugees who flee their homelands because of war or persecution. Their stories are told in five short chapters, Chapter 1 Leaving Everything Behind, Chapter 2 Saying Goodbye, Chapter 3 It Isn't Over Yet, Chapter 4 Mama, Where Are You, and Chapter 5 Hope For Tomorrow. Author Paul Tom was born to Cambodian refugees in camp in Thailand. Now a Montreal-based director, author, video editor and curator of museum video exhibitions, Alone is Paul Tom's first book. 

Although their circumstances are different, all three refugees, Afshin, Alain and Patricia face uncertainty over their future as they travel to a strange country. All three endure the loneliness of separation from their parents, in particular their mothers. This is highlighted in "Chapter 4 Mama, Where Are You?"  Afshin must watch his Iranian classmates at lunch eat the food their mothers make for them.  Alain whose mother has died in a hospital in Nairobi, Kenya, the loss is especially keen. He wakes up crying one morning. "But I'm tired of being strong all the time. I'm broken. Mama is gone forever. And I miss her so much." In Canada, talking on the phone to her mother reminds Patricia of the long distance between them and how much she misses her mother. "I was prepared for many things when I came here. But not for a life without her." Patricia states that "I don't realize that this is the last time I will feel the enveloping weight of her love." 

All three experience setbacks once they arrive in the United States or Canada. They feel the loneliness and separation from those they left behind keenly: When Afshin is invited to a classmate's home for dinner, the smell of ghormeh sabzi is overwhelming. "The smell brings back happy memories. I see familiar faces and I hear laughter, the sounds of children playing and adults talking loudly, carefree. I take a bite. The world stops. I'm caught under a wave of emotions. My throat tightens. I start to tremble. It's so intense that I burst into tears. At that moment, I can feel every kilometer separating me from my childhood and the people I love."  For Alain, the accomplishment of graduating high school is painful. "At the high school graduation ceremony, the other students are surrounded by their parents and loved ones. I pretend to look for my parents in the room. I know they're not here." The cover of Alone effectively portrays this sense of loss and of separation.

Alone highlights the experiences of three real-life young refugees who fled their countries, leaving behind family, friends and their culture, in the hopes of being able to live in peace, safety and dignity. Tom concludes Alone by letting his readers know what has become of all three refugees after being accepted into Canada. The short text and digitally created illustrations help those of us who live in countries receiving refugees, to empathize and understand, to be more accepting and to put ourselves in their situations. Few want to be a refugee, and most refugees would love to return home to their families and their countries. Alone helps us to understand and to empathize. This biography is an adaptation of the documentary film, Seuls.

Book Details:

Alone by Paul Tom
Toronto: Groundwood Books  2022
143 pp.

Unbreakable. The Spies Who Cracked the Nazi's Secret Code by Rebecca E. F. Barone

Unbreakable tells the remarkable story of how the British, French and Polish worked to break the Enigma code, helping the Allies to win World War II.

The story opens in Warsaw, Poland in 1929.  A "heavy package with a German postmark" arrived at the Polish customs office. Almost immediately, an urgent request came in from the German embassy to return the package which should never have been sent to Poland as it was intended for a German recipient. His curiosity piqued, the Polish customs officer opened the package and found what at first glance looked to be a typewriter. However, there was no ribbon, no carriage to hold paper like a regular typewriter. There were keys which when pressed lit up one of the small circular windows arranged in rows at the top. The Polish customs officer called the Polish cipher agency and two men arrived to examine the machine. Over the weekend they took the machine apart, examined it and reassembled it. It was repackaged and returned to Germany, the delay being that it was the weekend.

Two years later on November 1, 1931, Hans-Thilo Schmidt met up with Rodolphe Lemoine, in the Grand Hotel in Verviers, Belgium. Schmidt was an assistant to the head of the Germain cipher office while Lemoine was the top recruiter and handler for the Deuxieme Bureau of the French military intelligence. Germany had developed a new cipher that no one in the world was able to break. They were using a machine called the Enigma to create the code and it was unbreakable.  Schmidt told Lemoine that he had access to all the information pertaining to Enigma and could give it to France, for a price. When Schmidt began bringing information to France, Captain Gustave Bertrand, a senior officer and a code breaker became involved. The initial information Schmidt brought was not helpful to either the French or the British in solving the Enigma problem. 

Undaunted, Bertrand travelled to Warsaw, Poland in December, 1931 to meet with Major Gwido Langer, head of the Polish cipher office, in the hopes the Polish and French might work together. Bertrand gave Langer the Enigma manuals and instructions that Schmidt had passed along. Langer was ecstatic because up to this point they had been unable to crack Enigma and he had high hopes this new information would help.

 

The Enigma was complex machine in which an electrical signal passed from the keyboard to a plugboard connected to pairs of letters and then to three (or more) rotors and onto a reflecting drum which sent the signal back through the rotors, plugboard to a window at the top of the machine with a letter. Each letter in a message when through this encryption. In order to decode the message, the settings in the Enigma machine of the receiver had to be the same as those of the sender's Enigma. The daily indicator settings for the rotors consisted of three letters, one for each rotor that gave the starting angle for each rotor were sent TWICE at the beginning of the message, unencrypted. These daily settings were called the key.

Meanwhile in Germany in November, 1932 political events were beginning to move quickly. Adolf Hitler had been arrested for the Munich Beer Hall Putsch years ago in 1924 on charges of high treason. He was given a lenient nine month sentence during which time he wrote his infamous Mein Kampf. In this book, Hitler outlined his plans to recover Germany's glory and eliminate the Jews and Polish people whom he considered "inferior races". Germany's problems were all due to the presence of Jews in the country and the world. In the following years, Hitler began to spread his message throughout Germany, that certain races and religions were responsible for the dire economic situation in the country. His political power grew until the Nazis held almost a third of the seats in the German government.

In November, 1932, in Warsaw, Poland, Langer's cipher staff were unsuccessful so he decided to try a new approach: he hired electronics expert Antoni Palluth, one of the two men who had examined the missing Enigma in 1929 and built a replica. He brought along Maksymilian Ciezki, head of the German section of the Polish cipher office. These two men brought in three young mathematicians, Marian Rejewski, Henryk Zygalski and Jerzy Rozycki. Langer's approach changed from linguistics to mathematics and it paid off. 

Working on his own, Rejewski initially had no success using variables and developing mathematical equations that explained how changes to the rotors or the plugboard affected one another. But then Schmidt gave Bertrand "...a photocopy of two tables of the keys for September and October, 1932". Bertrand passed these on to Langer who gave them to Ciezki and then to Rejewski.  At first it seemed like these did not help either, but then Rejewski decided to make a different guess about the Enigma keyboard which was arranged similar to that of a typewriter except adapted for the German language. Instead he wondered if the letters on the typewriter keys were arranged in alphabetical order. When he did this, all his equations worked and the Poles were able to read the German Enigma! It was January, 1933.

But the Polish ciphers had their work cut out for them. With Germany preparing for war, German military and civilian groups, each called a "net", were now using Enigma to send messages. Each net began using different keys and the Polish cipher team had to break each key for each net every day. This exhausting work went on for five years at Saxon Palace in Warsaw. As tensions increased between Germany and Poland, Langer decided to move the cipher team to the Kabaty Woods, ten miles outside of Warsaw to a new built complex called "the Gale". The code breaking continued but was so tedious that Rejewski developed a machine called a bomba, with switches and rotors "that could run through all the combinations from a known rotor starting point."

In Germany the situation continued to worsen.  In March, 1938, Lemoine was picked up the Gestapo and released, German troops crossed into Austria in the Anschluss, the Annexation of Austria, and in September 1938, the Sudetenland area of Czechoslovakia was annexed by Germany. Then in December, 1938, the Germans increased the number of rotors used in Enigma making determining the keys very difficult. 

The English and French still did not know the Polish had been able to read Enigma and their efforts were unsuccessful. Their meeting in Paris, France with the Polish revealed nothing. After Germany invaded Prague Czechoslovakia, Lithuania and Slovakia, Alastair Denniston (head of British codebreaking) and Alfred Dillwyn Knox met with Bertrand, Langer and the Polish cipher team. There they learned that the Poles had broken Enigma years earlier and they obtained a replica of Enigma.

With the British, French and Polish codebreakers struggling to catch up and find a way to break open Enigma, open war began with the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. As British codebreakers took up the task of deciphering Enigma, the British navy also set about obtaining any information they could from captured weather boats and sinking U-boats. The race was on to defeat Enigma and win the war.

Discussion

 

Unbreakable is the riveting account of the race by the Allies to unlock the German's Enigma coding machine. Barone masterfully guides her readers through this complex story that involves so many people, some of whom lost their lives to the cause.

Barone pieces together the contributions many Polish, French and British made in the race to break Enigma. Barone, in her Epilogue writes, 

"Breaking the naval Enigma was a testament to teamwork. There was not one hero, not even on team of heroes. The Enigma story played out over the course of more than a decade, with action spread throughout almost a dozen countries: Polish cryptologists worked early and long to crack the Enigma cipher; French and German spies and agents provided intelligence; British codebreakers took up the puzzle; naval ships and sailors seized codebooks from the U-boats; intercept stations relayed messages; and Wrens at the bombes actually ran the machines."

Her cast of characters includes not just the codebreakers like the Polish team of Rejewski, Zygalski, Rozycki, Langer, Ciezki and Palluth, and the British team of Alan Turing who developed the "cryptological bombe", Harry Hinsley, Hugh Alexander, and Gordon Welchman who devised a way to configure the wiring of Turing's bombe, and Joan Clarke. Many others took risks that sometimes cost them their lives. There were the over sixteen hundred "Wrens" (Women's Royal Navy Service) whose task was to operate and maintain the more than two hundred bombes, a physically challenging task that could easily cause a short circuit. There was Gunner "Florrie" Foord who rescued a bag containing "cribs"  and plugboard settings that allowed Turing to set his bombe to work solving the naval Enigma. And there was First Lieutenant Tony Fasson and sailor Colin Grazier who rescued codebooks from the sinking U-boat U-559 at the expense of their lives, codebooks that ultimately broke the naval Enigma. 

Unbreakable manages to explain the workings of Enigma and how it was deciphered in a way that is understandable and engaging to readers. It was a complicated machine and breaking it was not a one step task, but involved many attempts and innovations by the codebreakers.  The story is broken up into four parts, with short chapters, focusing on a single topic with some black and white photographs. Some chapters focus on events while others on specific individuals such as Joan Clarke.

Barone includes an Epilogue in which she informs readers as to the fate of some of the individuals she focused on, a detailed Timeline of events beginning in 1929, and extensive Bibliography for further research. There are also Endnotes providing sources to quotes used throughout the text.

Unbreakable is a fascinating account of the efforts of codebreakers, military men, and spies to crack Enigma which was considered unbreakable by the Germans. 

Book Details:

Unbreakable: The Spies Who Cracked the Nazi's Secret Code by Rebecca E.F. Barone
New York: Henry Holt and Company   2022

260 pp.

Life In Hot Water by Mary Batten

This picture book explores the fascinating and unique world that exists around thermal vents found in the world's ocean trenches.

At the bottom of the oceans lie the most extreme environments on Earth: hydrothermal vents that gush water hot enough to melt lead! Uncovering this world has been a grand adventure.

Hydrothermal vents were predicted to exist in the deep ocean by geologists. In an attempt to locate these vents, the National Science Foundation funded several ocean expeditions during the early 1970's. Remotely operated vehicles called ROVs were used. Through the use of deep-sea cameras and temperature sensors, the mid-ocean ridge near the Galapagos Islands was identified as a potential location for the vents. A rise in temperature had been recorded close to the seafloor in water that should be freezing.

A pilot and two scientists discovered the cause of this temperature rise on the morning of February 17, 1977 when they descended into the deep in a deep-diving HOV (human-occupied vehicle) called Alvin. They were part of the  Galapagos Hydrothermal Expedition which was searching for the cause of the temperature rise. Alvin descended a mile and a half below the surface of the Pacific Ocean to total darkness on the ocean floor. When they turned on the lights they saw "jets of  hot, dark-coloured liquid exploding upward like geysers..." Even more incredible and completely unexpected were the living creatures they saw living on the rocks around the hydrothermal vents. This was the beginning of many remarkable discoveries that would be made around these vents in the coming years.

Discussion

In Life In Hot Water: Wildlife at the Bottom of the Ocean, author Mary Batten describes the incredible ecosystem that scientists have discovered existing around the hydrothermal vents that form along the mid-ocean ridge. Invisible to humans until technology was developed to enable scientists to explore the deepest regions of the oceans.

Batten takes her readers first to the discovery of the hydrothermal vents and then describes how they are formed along the mid-ocean ridges. As the tectonic plates move, volcanoes erupt along the mid-ocean ridges, opening more fissures in the Earth's crust. The cold seawater seeps into these fissures it is heated to high temperatures by magma. This causes the seawater to react with the minerals in the surrounding rocks, causing a plume of mineral and chemical rich water. Scientists discovered two types of hydrothermal vents which they named black smokers and white smokers, based on the colour of their plumes and their unique chemical composition. 

Even more intriguing and very unexpected was the unique life forms that the expeditions discovered living around the hydrothermal vents. These life forms were discovered to use chemosynthesis, a  process animals use to produce the energy needed to survive, that was previously unknown. Batten details the remarkable creatures who have adapted in the most unusual ways to live in this extreme environment. The "iron snail", the Hoff crabs, the Pompeii worms, and the vent octopus are just a few of the vent animals who have changed the way scientists think about life.

The fascinating science information presented in Life In Hot Water is accompanied by the beautiful artwork by illustrator Thomas Gonzalez. Rendered in pastel, coloured pencils and airbrush, Gonzalez has captured the mysterious environment of the deep ocean with a palette of black, blues, greys and whites.

There is a summary of important facts covered in the book, and an Author's Note as well as a Glossary and a Selected Bibliography for further reading. This informative and well done picture book is highly recommended for budding scientists of all ages.

Book Details:

Life In Hot Water. Wildlife at the Bottom of the Ocean by Mary Batten
Atlanta: Peachtree Publishing Company Inc.     2021

Yours 'Til Niagara Falls by Brenda Z. Guiberson

In this colourful picture book, Niagara Falls tells its own story beginning when millions of years ago the land was covered by an ocean filled with trilobites and crinoids. At this time it was not a waterfalls. Millions of years passed, and their remains accumulated on the ocean floor eventually hardening into dolostone. 

Even eighteen thousand years ago, Niagara Falls was still not a waterfalls. It was the time of the most recent Ice Age when large ice sheets, miles thick covered the land. These glaciers scrapped and gouged out valleys and gorges. Woolly mammoths and saber-tooth tigers roamed the land.

Just over twelve thousand years ago, the glacial ice melted and the water formed glacial lakes and rivers. One river formed between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, plunging over a steep cliff made of dolostone and shale. That falls would be named Niagara Falls. Humans soon appeared at the falls, watching with wonder, and listening to the thundering voice of the water. The waterfall became the center of stories, of Hinu the Great Thunderer who hid in the cave behind the water. Settlers who came later, made up the story of a maiden, called the Maid of the Mist who could be seen in the mist of the waterfall.

 

Over many, many years the roaring waters cut into the layers of rock causing the waterfall to move up the river. In 1678, the waterfall was visited by Father Louis Hennepin who wrote about how large it was. Soon the Niagara Falls became famous because of his writings which were read by many people. 

The area around the falls grew busy with tourists and attractions like the Maid of the Mist I which began offering tours in 1846. The falls even became an attraction for daredevils. But it also offered a way for those who were enslaved in the United States to cross over into freedom in Canada. In 1881, the water of Niagara Falls was harnessed to provide electricity. The water today continues to flow over the cliffs of dolostone and shale, and the erosion continues. Some day, far into the future, Niagara Falls will reach Lake Ontario and the falls will no longer exist. 

Discussion

Yours 'Til Niagara Falls is a nonfiction book about the history of this famous waterfall, told from the perspective of Niagara Falls! Using the vibrant illustrations of artist William Low, Niagara Falls takes us through time from its beginning as sediments laid down in a large inland see that divided North America, to its discovery by early humans after the last Ice Age, to its modern-day tourist iteration. The beautiful illustrations were created using ink, crayon, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator and capture the rich blues and greens of the falls.

Guiberson doesn't just focus on Niagara Falls' interesting geologic history, but also the unique modern events that are part of the falls as it developed into a burgeoning tourist attraction. There is the story about tightrope walker Charles Blondin, the Great Farini, and Annie Edson Taylor, the poor, sixty-three-year-old teacher who went over the falls in a white oak barrel and lived to sell postcards about it. In fact, there's so much Niagara Falls trivia it's impossible to include it all in a small picture book like this! This is a well-written, colourful and engaging picture book on one of the worlds most amazing natural sites.

Book Details:

Yours 'Til Niagara Falls by Brenda Z. Guiberson
New York: Godwin Books

Fashionopolis. The Secrets Behind The Clothes We Wear by Dana Thomas

Shopping for clothing is a favourite activity the world over. So it's not surprising it is a three trillion dollar industry which produces about one hundred billion items every year. But as you walk through stores with racks of clothing, have you ever wondered how and where the clothing you buy was made? Do you ever think about who made that garment you just purchased? 

In Fashionopolis, Dana Thomas describes how our clothing today is made by a manufacturing process that has been corrupted by greed causing harm to people and the environment.  The fashion business is constructed like a pyramid with haute couture and bespoke fashion at the top, ready-to-wear clothing that is found in department stores and boutiques (Gucci and Ann Taylor) in the middle, and fast fashion - cheap, trendy clothing found in H&M, Zara, and Joe Fresh (a Canadian retailer).  It is fast fashion that most of us buy and it is the most problematic. 

To understand the modern fashion industry, Thomas begins by going back to the Industrial Revolution in 1771 with Richard Arkwright's opening of the world's first water-powered textile mill near Manchester, England. Arkwright combined two inventions, the carding machine and the cotton jenny to spin cotton into yarn and then made yarn into fabric. The factories employed poor men, women and children for low wages in dangerous working conditions. Shifts were long, the air was filled with cotton fibres and workers lived on factory property in brick houses. The mills were so profitable, that by 1790, Arkwright owned nearly two hundred mills in Great Britain.  At this time, clothing was still hand-sewn.

This factory model was imported to the United States by Francis Cabot Lowell in the early 1800's and it was profitable because Black slaves planted and harvested the cotton. After 1830, the invention of the lockstitch sewing machine meant clothing could now be made faster. Eventually large factories were located in the Eastern United States, in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania where underwear and work clothes were made. In New York, in the late 1800's clothing copied from couture designs in Paris were made by European immigrants who knew how to sew. Eventually, there were so many garment factories, that whole sections of cities became known as the "Garment District". Until 1980, most clothing worn by Americans was made in the United States, but that would change with the coming of free trade.

Thomas then moves on to explore tariffs, protectionism and free trade. In particular, she  focuses on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Canada, the United States and Mexico. Those who supported NAFTA believed that without tariffs, good would cost less, and there would be more jobs in the U.S. However, opponents believed that factories would relocated to the country where the cost of production was the cheapest, in this case Mexico. As it turned out, opponents were correct. As the process of globalization continued, manufacturers relocated factories from North America and Europe to Southeast Asia, China, Turkey, India and Pakistan. While the prices of other goods we purchase increased, this was not the case with clothing. In fact, prices dropped, leading consumers to buy more, wear them less and throw them out faster.

From this point on, Thomas goes on to outline the cost of fast fashion to workers in illegal sweatshops in the United States which employ illegal immigrants, as well as workplace abuse in factories in the developing world. She also traces the history of fashion's abuse of workers, the use of slaves and child labor in factories both in the Great Britain and in the United States. 

There is a fascinating chapter, titled Dirty Laundry which explores the making of blue jeans, both the history of jeans, the use of indigo dye and a revealing look into the jeans finishing industry in Vietnam and China. Thomas recounts the history of the Levis Strauss company to show what can happen when a business loses its conscience and becomes focused on profit.

This leads into Part II of the book which focuses on how the fashion industry can be reset, producing clothing in an honest way that doesn't damage the environment or harm workers. Thomas profiles many different people who are trying to do fashion differently such as designers Natalie Chanin and Billy Reid. Chanin and Reid are doing "slow fashion", that is slowing down production of fashion, using locally produced textiles and dye for their designs. In this chapter readers are introduced to many new concepts related to slow fashion such as reshoring which is bringing back the manufacturing that moved to other countries after NAFTA and rightshoring which is the reopening of those abandoned factories that were closed due to NAFTA and installing the newest technology to produce clothing. 

In Part III, Thomas highlights designed Stella McCartney's  efforts to change the fashion industry for the better. Many of McCartney's materials are vegan based, produced and sold in buildings that are environmentally friendly. Fashionopolis also explores the work to recycle fabrics of discarded clothing. Thomas writes that since "...the Industrial Revolution, we have been consuming mass-manufactured products in a linear manner, like a timeline. The product is made; we buy the product, we use the product; we throw away the product. Then we start again....It's a straight line, with a beginning, a middle and end...In a circular system, products are continually recycled. reborn, and reused." To do this we need to figure out how to recycle fashion which is predominantly made from some combination of polyester and cotton. Stacey Flynn states that "we fail to innovate on so many levels because we've been reliant on nineteenth-century equipment' - spinners, looms, sewing machines - 'and the way we think about that equipment is with a twentieth-century mindset - that resources are infinite, that cash is the only thing that matters."

Discussion

Fashionopolis: The Secrets Behind The Clothes We Wear is an eye-opening look into the world of fast fashion, how it all began, and what might be done to change the industry so that it is more sustainable and ethical.

In this young readers edition, Thomas describes how with the Industrial Revolution, the making of clothing moved out of the home and into the factory, becoming fast fashion, and an industry filled with questionable practices. The fashion industry has become a "business obsessed with profits, corrupting the supply chain, from raw materials to labor. That greed has given us offshoring, layoffs, poorly paid and treated workers, shoddy factories, tragedies."

Fashionopolis also features those designers and insiders who are trying to change the industry and its practices, restarting the fashion and textile industries in the United States by sourcing locally, ethically produced textiles and dyes and "slowing" down fashion. Thomas explains new terms such as "false economy" and "right shoring" in an easy-to-understand way and offers readers ways they too can help to change the fashion industry by purchasing fewer new clothes, wearing vintage and secondhand, by washing and repairing the clothing they currently own, as well as learning to sew and knit. There are some new ideas such as renting clothing too.

 

Hopefully, Fashionopolis will encourage young readers think twice before they shop at Ardene, Old Navy or the many other fast fashion outlets. Fashionopolis is persuasive in its presentation, filled with interesting details about how our clothes are made and offers concrete suggestions for a more sustainable, ethical fashion industry, if we all do our part.

 

Book Details:

Fashionopolis: The Secrets Behind The Clothes We Wear by Dana Thomas
New York:  Dial Books For Young Readers       2022
196 pp.