The Horrors of Andersonville

The Horrors of Andersonville: Life and Death Inside a Civil War Prison
by Catherine Gourley
192 pages
published by Lerner Publishing Group

Publisher's Description:

Conditions at Andersonville were indeed deplorable. The soldiers drank from polluted water and ate meager rations—mainly bug-infested cornmeal and bacon, which was often consumed raw, as there was little firewood for cooking. While some prisoners managed to make tents or shanties, many had to survive in the open without blankets or adequate clothing. Disease was rampant.

The camp had other dangers as well. Guards could shoot prisoners for just reaching across the deadline—an internal border 15 feet from the stockade walls. Some prisoners turned against each other in hopes of earning extra rations. And for a time, a gang called the Raiders preyed on fellow prisoners.

Of the nearly 45,000 prisoners that came to Andersonville, more than 13,000 died. When the Civil War ended, many people felt outrage. Was the camp commander Captain Henry Wirz ultimately responsible for these horrors? Or was he unfairly executed as a scapegoat for the atrocities of the camp?

Using diaries, letters, official U.S. government war records, media of the time, and other primary source documents from both Confederate and Union soldiers, author Catherine Gourley pieces together the life and death stories of Andersonville, revealing that the horrors of war include far more than what happens on the battlefield.

My Comments:

Andersonville prison is one element of Civil War history that slipped through the cracks of my formal education. I hadn't heard of it until a high school student needed help finding books about it for a history project. At first I was confused, thinking that it was somehow connected to the Andersonville neighborhood of Chicago. Actually, it was a prison in Georgia where Union captives were held by the Confederacy from February 1864 to the end of the Civil War. By all accounts, Andersonville was truly horrible. Originally intended to hold 10,000 prisoners at a time, the population swelled to more than 30,000 in August 1864. There simply wasn't enough food, water, space, medicine, shelter or clothing for anybody.

Not being familiar with the prison other than from reading this book, I can't speak to its veracity. I can say that it's derived from a variety of well-documented sources including the diaries and memoirs of inmates, eyewitness accounts that were published in local and national newspapers and magazines of the time, and records of the U.S. War Department. Gourley also presents a balanced view of what went on within the prison - for instance, the infamous killing of a crippled inmate is presented from several conflicting points of view. She also highlights harsh conditions in Union prisons for confederate soldiers like Elmira (also known as "Hellmira") through effective use of text boxes.

The writing is very engaging and the layout and design make it very easy to follow. Page and chapter breaks and even the placement of the shaded text boxes preserve the narrative flow. I even like the old-school font and subtle color scheme (deep blue, black, white and shades of gray).

The many illustrations and photographs are both relevant to the story and well-captioned. Captions for illustrations that appeared in newspapers, for instance, include source and contextual information. A couple of amazing drawings of the prison were actually drawn by inmates in their diaries.

The index at the end is very useful, as are the selected bibliography and further reading. I like the "cast of characters" at the beginning and end, however I felt that some people were left out who maybe should have been included, and the inclusion of others left me wondering why they hadn't been mentioned more in the text.

The source notes are useful, however I found that I needed to reference the bibliography to decipher some of the abbreviations. Another small quibble is that the reader has to assume that the number before each note is the page number. It would have been nice if "page" had been typed at the top of the first number column, just for clarification. It appears that, at one point, each note had been assigned a unique number, because I discovered two inexplicable superscript numbers while reading the text (the first one is "76").

One other complaint is the occasional use of parentheses to explain certain terms that someone (author? editor?) felt young adults would not understand. Some of these parenthetical definitions may be useful, but others are just annoyingly condescending - for instance, I can't imagine any teen not knowing that the eagle is the national bird. Overall, I felt they detracted from the book, but not enough to ruin it.

Your Comments?

More Books Coming Soon...

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending YALSA's webinar Back to the Facts: YA Nonfiction, presented by Angela Carstensen. A recording of the webinar will be available through YALSA's members' only section in two months time, but in the mean time I think it's okay if I share some of the notes that I took.

Carstensen was the 2010 chair of the YALSA nonfiction award committee. I've previously mentioned the article she wrote for YALS. It doesn't look like it's available online, but the effort to track down a print copy is worthwhile.

In addition to the YALSA award, she highlighted several other awards that are useful for collection development, including the ALSC's Sibert Medal (nonfiction for ages birth-14), the NCTE Orbis Pictus Award (for children), the AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for excellence in science books (for children and young adults), and the Boston Globe-Horn Book awards (also for children and young adults)

End of the year best-of lists are another very helpful resource, and a great place to access them is Early Word. (Early Word also hosts periodic galley chats on twitter that are fun to follow!)

Carstensen also mentioned several blogs including Nonfiction Matters by Marc Aronson, Bookends by Lynn Rutan and Cindy Dobrez, Reality Rules by Betsy Fraser, and INK: Interesting Nonfiction for Kids. She also mentioned this blog, which was completely unexpected and wonderful, but also made me realize, "Oh no, I haven't updated it recently!"

I'm currently reading The Horrors of Andersonville, and also have The War to End All Wars: World War I and This Is Rocket Science waiting for me, so I pledge to post comments on these books very soon!

Finally, Carstensen highlighted several new and upcoming titles, some of which I hadn't heard of yet. These include: The Brave Escape of Edith Wharton (pubbed this month), Frozen Secrets and The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie (both pubbing in October). She also mentioned two more entries in the Scientists in the Field series, Kakapo Rescue and Project Seahorse that I have just neglected until now (Project Seahorse and Frozen Secrets have been recently featured on Fraser's blog).

Please share any great new nonfiction books for young adults that you've discovered in the comments field below!

Smile

Smile
by Raina Telgemeier
214 pages
published by Graphix (Scholastic)

Publisher's description:

Raina just wants to be a normal sixth grader. But one night after Girl Scouts she trips and falls, severely injuring her two front teeth, and what follows is a long and frustrating journey with on-again, off-again braces, surgery, embarrassing headgear, and even a retainer with fake teeth attached. And on top of all that, there's still more to deal with: a major earthquake, boy confusion, and friends who turn out to be not so friendly. This coming-of-age true story is sure to resonate with anyone who has ever been in middle school, and especially those who have ever had a bit of their own dental drama.

My comments:

I've never had braces and slept completely through the removal of my wisdom teeth, so Raina's account of her personal "dental drama" was very enlightening to me. I had no idea, for instance, that teeth could be shifted to the extremes that hers are. The fact that this is a graphic memoir, and Telgemeier uses drawings to show you what has been done to her teeth makes it very easy to grasp the process. I'm not sure if young people facing the prospect of wearing braces would be more horrified or reassured by seeing what they could be in for, but anyone who's been through any of the various procedures will likely be comforted to know that they're not alone.

In addition to the dental drama, she also depicts how she learned to stand up for herself and pursue her own interests in high school, rather than trying to hold on to middle school friendships that no longer suit her. Who can't identify with that?

I really like Telgemeier's artwork. It's colorful and detailed without looking cluttered. The details help to create a strong sense of time (early 1990s) and place (both the overall San Francisco setting and her middle and high schools).

Other nice touches include the end papers, which have been designed to look like signature pages in a school yearbook, and the author's note, which explains how she came to put her story down on paper. Overall, it's a cute and charming book.

Your comments?

The Hive Detectives

The Hive Detectives: Chronicle of a Honey Bee Catastrophe
by Loree Griffin Burns
80 pages
published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt


Publisher's Comments:

Without honey bees the world would be a different place. There would be no honey, no beeswax for candles, and, worst of all, barely a fruit, nut, or vegetable to eat. So imagine beekeeper Dave Hackenburg's horror when he discovered twenty million of his charges had vanished. Those missing bees became the first casualties of a mysterious scourge that continues to plague honey bee populations today. In The Hive Detectives, Loree Griffin Burns profiles bee wranglers and bee scientists who have been working to understand colony collapse disorder, or CCD. In this dramatic and enlightening story, readers explore the lives of the fuzzy, buzzy insects and learn what might happen to us if they were gone.


My comments:

This is another solid entry in the Scientists in the Field series. Burns provides a very interesting look at honeybees, the mysterious affliction (Colony Collapse Disorder) that have decimated their populations since 2006, and the scientists who study them. The pages are full of colorful high-quality photographs that show off the bees and the different colors of honey that they produce, as well as lots of facts about bees, apiarists (another name for beekeepers) and the scientists, of course.

I like that the various theories of what is happening to the bees are presented, as well as the evidence the scientists find that either rule them out or mark them as possible culprits. It's made clear that we don't know for sure what is happening to the bees yet, and that further research is necessary.

At the end there is a helpful glossary of bee-related terms, the cutely named "Appendix Bee," and a nice list of resources (including books, documentaries and websites) for further study.

This book didn't grab me as much as another title in the same series, The Frog Scientist. I think this is partially because The Hive Detectives highlights several scientists instead of focusing on one. There simply isn't time or space for Burns to get very personal with her subjects.

Your Comments?

Simeon's Story

Simeon's Story: An Eyewitness Account of the Kidnapping of Emmett Till by Simeon Wright with Herb Boyd
144 pages
published by Lawrence Hill Books

Publisher's comments:

No modern tragedy has had a greater impact on race relations in America than the kidnapping and murder of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old black boy from Chicago whose body was battered beyond recognition and dumped in the Tallahatchie River while visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, in 1955. This grotesque crime became the catalyst for the civil rights movement.

Simeon Wright saw and heard his cousin Emmett whistle at Caroline Bryant at a grocery store; he was sleeping in the same bed with him when her husband came in and took Emmett away; and he was at the sensational trial.

Simeon’s Story tells what it was like to grow up in Mississippi in the 1940s; paints a vivid portrait of Moses Wright, Simeon’s father, a preacher who bravely testified against the killers; explains exactly what happened during Emmett’s visit to Mississippi, clearing up a number of common misperceptions; and shows how the Wright family lived in fear after the trial, and how they endured the years afterward.

Simeon’s Story is the gripping coming-of-age memoir of a man who was deeply hurt by the horror of his cousin’s murder and, through prayer and hope, has come to believe that it’s now time to tell it like it was.

My comments:

The foreword, by writer Herb Boyd, relates how he met Simeon Wright at a screening of a documentary about Till. Over the course of a few years, Wright was convinced to put his story in writing with help from Boyd. Boyd explains that it's Wright who tells the story (not him) and that he has merely added facts here and there to fill readers in more fully on the time and place. In the acknowledgments that follow, Wright thanks his wife for helping to convince him to share his story with Boyd.

Wright has told his story in plain but compelling language, and I felt as I read that I sat and listened to Wright telling it to me in person. There are only a couple of spots (near the beginning and near the end) where I sensed Boyd's intrusion, but even then the spell wasn't completely broken.

In addition to presenting a unique first-hand perspective of Emmett Till's last days, Wright reveals the story of his own life, which has been irrevocably shaped by Till's murder. Chapters near the end provide updates about the case, which was reopened in 2004, and the "Till Bill" that was signed into law in 2008.

In an appendix, Wright refutes several myths surrounding his cousin and the original trial of his murderers. The index is helpful for looking up names, things that modern young readers may be unfamiliar with (like the Sears catalog), and key locations like Bryant's grocery store.

There are a few black and white pictures integrated into the text, as well as a map and a layout of the Wright's home. The design and layout are not fancy; the gripping story is the main focus.

Your Comments?

Discussion Updates

The initial discussion held on June 2 was attended by a small but passionate group. Several new titles came up in addition to the ones I've written about on this blog:

The Hive Detectives: Chronicle of a Honeybee Catastrophe by Loree Griffin Burns has received starred reviews from Booklist and Kirkus. It's part of Houghton Mifflin's wonderful Scientists in the Field series, and like other entries in the series the well-researched text is accompanied by beautiful photographs.

If Stones Could Speak: Unlocking the Secrets of Stonehenge by Marc Aronson is a colorful archaeological mystery from National Geographic that has received starred reviews from School Library Journal and Booklist. New theories and discoveries about Stonehenge's are among the highlights.

They Called Themselves the KKK by Susan Campbell Bartoletti comes out in August, and is already generating a lot of buzz. The cover is shocking and the topic -- a secret terrorist organization takes root in America -- is gripping.

Charles Darwin and the Mystery of Mysteries by Niles Eldredge and Susan Pearson came out in May - I know, I know - do we need another book about Darwin? This seems to be a good one, though.

We Are the Weather Makers: The History of Climate Change was adapted by Sally Walker from a 2005 adult work by Tim Flannery. This is an important and popular topic.

Hip Hop World by Dalton Higgins is part of the Groundwork Guides series, and is a brief but well-rounded international survey of hip-hop music.

The final discussion has been scheduled for Thursday, December 2 at National-Louis University's North Shore Campus in Skokie, IL. Keep an eye out here for more details. In the meantime, look for reading suggestions here and feel free to post your own suggestions, as well.

Look for this Interesting Article...

If you haven't read it already, look for Angela Carstensen's article in the Spring 2010 issue of YALS, "YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults, Year One. " The 3-page feature starts on page 38. Carstensen was the chair of the new award committee, and she presents an enlightening inside view of the process that went into the selection of the 2010 nominations, finalists, and winners.

The committee wrangled with issues like whether to include poetry and books published for the 10-12 age range, readability and accessibility versus appeal, and how to judge books that don't rely on research. Carstensen ends the article by encouraging field nominations. The link to the page where you can nominate a title is: http://yalsa.ala.org/forms/nonfiction.php.