From School Library Journal
Grade 4-7?Gravelle seeks to introduce readers to a cultural group through the depiction of one child. Inevitably, both the culture and the individual's life are glossed over in so brief an overview, and each book becomes little more than a collection of generalities. In Growing Up in a Holler, readers meet 10-year-old Joseph and his family, who live in eastern Tennessee. Where the Partridge Drums introduces 10-year-old David and his cousin Chantelle, who live on a Mohawk reservation straddling the New York/Ontario border. The grainy full-color photos and crowded texts, which combine narrative about the particular family with sidebars of cultural information, fail to capture either Appalachian or Mohawk culture and result in confusion. There is a need for current nonfiction books about children in the various cultures that make up modern-day America: however, a gap stuffed with filler books still remains a holler.?Kathleen Whalin, Greenwich Country Day School, CT
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
