Review by Booklist Review
Gr. 6-12. Through the voices of the Irish people, Bartoletti tells the history of the Great Irish Famine of the late 1840s. Eyewitness accounts and memories combine with devastating facts: one million died from starvation and disease; two million emigrated; the famine could have been avoided; the legacy was a bitter resentment against the English, who owned most of Ireland. The year-by-year political history is occasionally heavy going; but, as she did in Growing Up in Coal Country (1996), a Booklist Editors' Choice, Bartoletti humanizes the big events by bringing the reader up close to the lives of ordinary people. There are heartbreaking accounts of evictions, of the Irish starving while food is exported to England, and of deaths in the coffin ships that took the desperate to North America. The text is broken up with many black-and-white drawings from newspapers of the time, and a long final essay includes information about books, primary sources, library collections, and Web sites that readers can turn to for school reports and for research into their own family histories. It's a wonder there are so few nonfiction books about this subject for young people. --Hazel Rochman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 6 Up-In the 1800s, potatoes were the staple food and source of income for the Irish. When blight struck the crop in 1845, they faced not only economic deprivation, but also starvation. Laborers sold their possessions for a few meals. Families unable to obtain enough food for their families had to choose who would eat, who would enter the workhouse, and who had to scrape by as best they could. Relief efforts by the English were meager and insufficient, particularly as the famine continued in Ireland for five years. More than one million people died in a five year span. Another two million emigrated to America, Canada, Australia, and other countries, extending the economic and political impact of the Irish potato famine. Bartoletti discusses both the political climate and historical events in her book (Houghton Mifflin, 2001), and intertwines them with personal accounts of individuals who lived through this time period. Traditional poetry and prose are woven throughout this volume, brought to life by narrator Graeme Malcolm, whose Irish lilt adds authenticity to the recording. A fine addition to middle and high school libraries.-Amanda Rollins, Northwest Village School, Plainville, CT (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
(High School) How could it be that the failure of a single crop could cause such enormous numbers of people to starve, sicken, and die? In explaining how repeated years of blighted crops decimated Ireland's huge subsistence class, Susan Campbell Bartoletti spells out an important lesson. ""One of the harsh realities about famine is that it is not about a lack of food; famine is about who has access to food."" While the farm laborers lost their single food source, landowners were exporting fine harvests to other countries. Bartoletti draws on an impressive array of sources to give faces and names to those who suffered and to those in positions of influence in Ireland and England, whose responses were sometimes inept, many times cruel, and in all cases inadequate. The bleak episodes of workhouses, soup kitchens, evictions, homes burned to quell disease, lack of medical care, and the indignities of emigration to inhospitable countries are not pleasant to read. But there's an inevitable connection to today's world as the whole cycle of famine, sickness, death, and desperate refugees plays out in almost exact parallel in many parts of the world. Added materials include a map, time line, discussion of bibliography and sources, and an index; numerous prints from the Illustrated London News add haunting evidence. m.a.b. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Using illustrations from mid-19th-century newspapers and stories of people actually involved, Bartoletti has written a fascinating account of a terrible time. In the Great Irish Famine, one million people died from starvation and disease, and two million fled to other countries after a fungus destroyed the potato crop, a disaster in a country where six million farm laborers depended on that one crop. Bartoletti's sure storytelling instincts put the reader in the midst of the drama. Though the layout is dense and uninviting (in galley form), the stories make the narrative memorable. Bridget O'Donnel, sick and seven months pregnant, is evicted from her cabin. "Spectre-like" crowds of walking skeletons in Skibbereen on market day see shops full of food they can't afford to buy. British Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel's determination to persuade the government to help is thwarted by laissez-faire economic policies and religious and ethnic prejudice. This is history "through the eyes and memories of the Irish people," and it is history that's meant to instruct. In her conclusion and extensive bibliography, Bartoletti steps back from her narrative to encourage readers to respond to the hunger, poverty, and human suffering in our own time. An illuminating discussion of the Great Irish Famine and how emigrants contributed to the growth of cities around the world. (Nonfiction. 10-14)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
