Afbeelding auteur

Ann E. Burg

Auteur van All The Broken Pieces

14 Werken 1,850 Leden 177 Besprekingen

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Bevat de naam: Ann E. Burg

Werken van Ann E. Burg

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A great book to introduce children to the struggles of WWII refugees.

I was not a fan of the orange fade out for some of the illustrations, but I assume this effect was used to make the pictures look like old photographs. The other pictures I really liked.
 
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Dances_with_Words | 3 andere besprekingen | Jan 6, 2024 |
I remember being a young kid learning about slavery and thinking something along the lines of, "Why would anyone accept being a slave?" At the time I didn't understand a lot of things. I didn't understand the drive to stay alive, even if it means living under unbearable conditions. I didn't understand what it means to be born into a culture that denies your humanity. If I had had the opportunity to read this book back then, I think it would've helped me understand the psychological shackles of slavery, not just the literal ones.

Grace is nine years old and has always lived with her mother in slave quarters on a tobacco plantation. But now Grace is being forced to live and work in the Big House serving the white Master and Missus. It's just on the other side of the hill from her family, but it means Grace won't see her mother. And it means Grace will be scrutinized by the hateful Missus. Through poetry, the reader feels Grace's fear, her intense love for her mother, and also her desire to speak her mind even though it's forbidden. When Grace discovers the Master and Missus intend to sell her mother and brothers at a slave auction, she finds the courage to try to save her family.

This story is based on new research about the Great Dismal Swamp, a seemingly uninhabitable area in Virginia and North Carolina that was a refuge for people escaping slavery. You can read more about it here: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/deep-swamps-archaeologists-fugitive-slaves...

… (meer)
 
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LibrarianDest | 21 andere besprekingen | Jan 3, 2024 |
It only took me an hour to read this, but it was intense. Between all the death, dismemberment, guilt, racism, violence and fear, there's baseball, piano playing, family dinners and lullabies. But that's what you get from books about the Vietnam War. Ann Burg's story doesn't shy away from gruesome details, but she also shows that life goes on.

I wasn't blown away by the writing (like I was by, say, [b:Out of the Dust|25346|Out Of The Dust|Karen Hesse|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1184485196s/25346.jpg|808243]). But it didn't make me roll my eyes (like, say, [b:Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba|6151004|Tropical Secrets Holocaust Refugees in Cuba|Margarita Engle|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255700915s/6151004.jpg|6330166]). I think the story was so moving because it rang true. It is difficult for most of us to imagine life as a Vietnamese boy adopted by a suburban American family in 1977. A boy who witnessed terrible things before being airlifted to a totally different world, a world where people blame him for the deaths of their loved ones. He tells his story as if he's just barely able to get through it. It's harrowing.

What age is this best for? That's a little tough. Matt, the narrator and main character, is 12 or so. There's no mature language, but there are enough disturbing scenes from war-torn Vietnam to make me think twice about giving this to a 10 or 11 year old. And the fact that the writing can be a little difficult to sort out makes me think it'd be best for 8th grade and up. It definitely requires a reader who is relatively skilled and mature.

Mock Newbery 2010
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LibrarianDest | 44 andere besprekingen | Jan 3, 2024 |
Representation: Black main character
Trigger warnings: Slavery, human trafficking, abuse

7/10, oh wow I haven't read a poetry book in a while but the last one I read called Grace Notes was good and I enjoyed this one as well and I thought that the writing style of this would let me down but somehow the author managed to pull it off which I was pleasantly surprised at, where do I begin. It starts off with the main character Grace about to be sent off into a building called the Big House where she will work for her master as a slave and she does that at first however she thinks about what it means to be free. These thoughts continue to be there as her master oppresses her until she had had enough of that so she devises a plan to escape and that plan was to go south through the swamps until no one can oppress her anymore. Soon enough Grace and some other characters execute the plan and go southwards away from the Big House and her master and towards the swamps which takes up the middle part of the book and I found it a bit sluggish and tedious since it's a major part but once I was done with it I reached the end where Grace finally exits the swamps, meets some new characters and achieves her goal which wraps up the book on a high note. The only thing that bugged me was that this is not #ownvoices since a white author wrote a book with a Black character and I found a book similar to this called Freewater you can try which is #ownvoices.… (meer)
 
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Law_Books600 | 21 andere besprekingen | Nov 3, 2023 |

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Statistieken

Werken
14
Leden
1,850
Populariteit
#13,910
Waardering
4.2
Besprekingen
177
ISBNs
64

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