Review by Booklist Review
Photographer Lewis Hines was a teacher in 1908, when the National Child Labor Committee hired him to take pictures of children working in factories, fields, and mines, often in hazardous conditions, to help support their families. With his heavy camera, his "flimsy and unreliable" tripod, and an abundance of good will, Hines traveled extensively, crisscrossing the U.S. for the next 10 years, speaking with children and working around their uncooperative bosses in order to gain the access he needed to fulfill his mission. His published photos opened viewers' eyes to the harsh, sometimes dangerous challenges kids faced and swayed public opinion toward limiting their hours and improving conditions at the workplaces employing them. Written in short, free-verse stanzas, the book's first-person text includes phrases and sentences from Hines' writing, indicated with italics and used effectively to bring his poetic voice, his gentle humor, and his constant empathy for working children into the narrative. Garland's warm, softly textured illustrations capture the action within well-realized period settings. An appealing introduction to a notable American photographer/reformer.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Writing in simple sensory verse, Hinrichs takes on the first-person perspective to tell the story of Lewis Wicks Hine (1874--1940), a white photographer whose pictures exposed exploitative labor conditions for children, aiming to end child labor by showing "their hard work,/ their hard lives,/ to start/ people thinking,/ to spark/ a desire to help,/ to ignite/ change." From canneries to cranberry bogs, shoe factories to cotton mills, Hine travels the country, photographing youth laborers, intending to make observers of his exhibitions consider the children's plight more deeply. Hinrichs indicates Hine's own words in italics, interweaving them into each spread's lengthy poems. Garland's evocative illustrations feature detailed, textured spreads of humans of varying skin tones, mostly white, with Hine's real photographs set into a few spreads. A compelling primer on art as activism. Back matter features notes to the reader and a timeline. Ages 6--9. (Sept.)
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Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 3--8--In this biography of Lewis Hine, readers see that he documented the human spirit in the form of photographs, or Hineographs, as he called them. He is known for photographing children who labored to help their families make ends meet during the early 1900s when child labor laws were not enforced. Born in Oshkosh, WI, Hine knew firsthand what it was like to have to help the family financially after his father died at a young age. Hine worked in horrible conditions, trying to keep food on the table for his two sisters and mother. The picture book begins with Hines as an adult traveling across the United States using his box camera to document children who are working in mills and fields. Beautiful illustrations, which appear to be a mix of digital and traditional media, bring the story to life. Hine visits factories, farms, and mines where children are laboring day and night in terrible conditions: "At the cotton mill I tell the overseer The Company sent me to take pictures of broken machinery. He believes me, lets me inside." Whatever it took to get inside the mill or factory to take his pictures, Hine would do it. His aim was to share his photos with the world, to make them, "sick and tired of the whole business, to make child labor pictures records of the past." Back matter includes a time line and photographs from Hine's life and of his work. VERDICT An excellent purchase for all libraries.--Tracy Cronce, Stevens Point Public School District, Stevens Point, WI
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Review by Horn Book Review
This biography of the early-twentieth-century photographer -- whose work brought attention to inhumane child-labor practices -- incorporates some of Hine's own words (italicized) in the free verse text (a "fusion of history and storytelling...grounded in careful research"). Readers meet some of Hine's (fictionalized) young subjects at an oyster cannery, a cranberry bog, a shoe factory (where he's denied entry), a cotton mill (where he deceives the overseer to gain access), and more. Together the impressionistic text and sepia-toned illustrations convey the work's drudgery and dangers. Ten pages of back matter feature (small) reproductions of Hine's work along with cultural and historical context and reflections on using art to affect social change. An annotated timeline traces the history of child labor and important dates in Hine's life. (c) Copyright 2023. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A tribute to the self-taught photographer who sparked real reform by turning faceless masses of abused workers into children with names and histories. Incorporating Hine's voice and some of his actual words (signaled with italics) into her free-verse monologue, Hinrichs highlights both his purposes--"I want to show their hard work / their hard lives" and also "their spirit. Because / the human spirit / is the big thing / after all"--and his methods of getting past suspicious factory overseers and of connecting with child workers in settings from cranberry bogs and canneries to coal mines. Garland's harmoniously toned painted images of a slender, deceptively inoffensive-looking White figure using an awkward box camera to take pictures of solemn children, most but not all White, with downcast eyes and patchy period clothes meld gradually toward the end into Hine's actual work (he called them "Hineographs"). More than 30 in all, they appear in a gallery that goes to the rear endpapers and are accompanied by a prose recap that downplays but at least mentions his quaint views on gender roles plus the fact that he took relatively few pictures of Black children and almost none of Asians. Russell Freedman's Kids At Work (1994) explores his life and legacy in greater detail, but there's enough here to leave even younger readers moved by his mission and his timeless portraits. A searching picture of a pioneering social crusader. (chronology, source list, endnotes) (Picture book/biography. 8-10) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
