Thursday, June 16, 2011
Friday, June 10, 2011
Wicked girls : a novel of the Salem witch trials
Wicked girls : a novel of the Salem witch trials
by Hemphill, Stephanie
Horn Book (July/August, 2010)
"Sure as meat makes a pie, / the villagers be certain / that Satan is among them. / The brisk spoons of girls / ladle fear / into everyone's bowls." In this forceful verse novel, Hemphill (Your Own, Sylvia, rev. 3/07) gives voice to those who writhed, twitched, and shrieked their way to power during the Salem witch trials. Her plausible interpretation of events is a Puritan Mean Girls, with peer pressure and group dynamics driving the young accusers to maintain their histrionic charade, even after they realize their actions' fatal consequences. The poems shift among the perspectives of three girls-Ann Putnam, Mercy Lewis, and Margaret Walcott-and Hemphill succeeds in carving out distinct personalities and motivations for each. Chillingly, she shows how the girls manipulate-and are manipulated by-their elders. For instance, twelve-year-old Ann's vindictive mother not-so-subtly mentions names of villagers she dislikes to her daughter, suggesting they may be the witches tormenting her. And Ann soon follows her mother's example: "My mother will have to learn / to do as I wish, or perhaps / I shall call her a witch?" An author's note elaborates both on the history of the trials and on the theory, adopted by Hemphill, that the girls knew that the "witches" swinging from the gallows were innocent and the faces they saw in the mirror were guilty.
Reviews & Awards
Booklist starred 06/15/10
Publishers Weekly starred 07/05/10
Horn Book 07/01/10
School Library Journal starred 08/01/10
Kirkus Review 06/01/10
Voice of Youth Advocates (V.O.Y.A.) 10/01/10
Kirkus Review starred 06/01/10
Wilson's Senior High School 02/01/11
by Hemphill, Stephanie
Horn Book (July/August, 2010)
"Sure as meat makes a pie, / the villagers be certain / that Satan is among them. / The brisk spoons of girls / ladle fear / into everyone's bowls." In this forceful verse novel, Hemphill (Your Own, Sylvia, rev. 3/07) gives voice to those who writhed, twitched, and shrieked their way to power during the Salem witch trials. Her plausible interpretation of events is a Puritan Mean Girls, with peer pressure and group dynamics driving the young accusers to maintain their histrionic charade, even after they realize their actions' fatal consequences. The poems shift among the perspectives of three girls-Ann Putnam, Mercy Lewis, and Margaret Walcott-and Hemphill succeeds in carving out distinct personalities and motivations for each. Chillingly, she shows how the girls manipulate-and are manipulated by-their elders. For instance, twelve-year-old Ann's vindictive mother not-so-subtly mentions names of villagers she dislikes to her daughter, suggesting they may be the witches tormenting her. And Ann soon follows her mother's example: "My mother will have to learn / to do as I wish, or perhaps / I shall call her a witch?" An author's note elaborates both on the history of the trials and on the theory, adopted by Hemphill, that the girls knew that the "witches" swinging from the gallows were innocent and the faces they saw in the mirror were guilty.
Reviews & Awards
Booklist starred 06/15/10
Publishers Weekly starred 07/05/10
Horn Book 07/01/10
School Library Journal starred 08/01/10
Kirkus Review 06/01/10
Voice of Youth Advocates (V.O.Y.A.) 10/01/10
Kirkus Review starred 06/01/10
Wilson's Senior High School 02/01/11
Salem witch judge : the life and repentance of Samuel Sewall
Salem witch judge : the life and repentance of Samuel Sewall by LaPlante, Eve
From Booklist
Sewall (1652–1730) was an English-born American jurist who presided over the 1692 witchcraft trials in Salem, Massachusetts. Nineteen innocent men and women were hanged, and one man was pressed to death with large stones, the result of trumped-up charges of witchcraft. Some suspects were strangers to Sewall, but others were his friends. For several years, he struggled with a growing sense of shame and remorse and later assumed in public the blame for the executions. He spent much of the remainder of his life trying to restore himself in the eyes of God. Sewall wrote prodigiously and left behind extensive diaries, poems, essays, books, annotated almanacs, ledgers, and letters. His diary, covering the years from 1672 to 1729, was first published in the nineteenth century and is still in print. LaPlante also chronicles the man's later life—Sewall beca
Reviews & Awards
Booklist 06/01/07
New York Times 10/07/07
Kirkus Review 08/01/07
Publishers Weekly 06/04/07
From Booklist
Sewall (1652–1730) was an English-born American jurist who presided over the 1692 witchcraft trials in Salem, Massachusetts. Nineteen innocent men and women were hanged, and one man was pressed to death with large stones, the result of trumped-up charges of witchcraft. Some suspects were strangers to Sewall, but others were his friends. For several years, he struggled with a growing sense of shame and remorse and later assumed in public the blame for the executions. He spent much of the remainder of his life trying to restore himself in the eyes of God. Sewall wrote prodigiously and left behind extensive diaries, poems, essays, books, annotated almanacs, ledgers, and letters. His diary, covering the years from 1672 to 1729, was first published in the nineteenth century and is still in print. LaPlante also chronicles the man's later life—Sewall beca
Reviews & Awards
Booklist 06/01/07
New York Times 10/07/07
Kirkus Review 08/01/07
Publishers Weekly 06/04/07
The physick book of Deliverance Dane : a novel
The physick book of Deliverance Dane : a novel by Howe, Katherine
.
Kirkus Review (May 15, 2009)
A first novel about alchemy, magic and witchcraft, set unsurprisingly in Salem, Mass., in the late 17th century and also, perhaps surprisingly, in Marblehead, Mass., in 1991. Connie Goodwin has just passed her doctoral oral exam in colonial American history at Harvard, and she looks forward to working with her mentor, Professor Manning Chilton, on breaking new ground in her dissertation. Then Connie gets an unexpected call from her New Age-y mother Grace, who is about to lose the house in Marblehead she inherited from her own mother because she's neglected for 20 years to pay the taxes on it--can Connie get it cleaned up and on the market for her? The house is, of course, eerie as well as abandoned. As Connie begins to look through Granna's house, she picks up an old Bible that gives her both an otherworldly feeling and an electric charge. Out of the Bible falls an antique key with a tiny scroll bearing the cryptic words "Deliverance Dane." Ever the good historian, Connie begins to track down the name. Eventually she finds allusions to a "Physick Book": a manual of medicine used by knowledgeable women in the colonial era, but also a book of spells. The volume seems ever more elusive as Connie's desire grows stronger to track it down. She's also feeling some uncomfortable pressure from Professor Chilton, who wants the book as badly as Connie, ostensibly because he thinks it will be helpful in a scholarly presentation he plans to make but more overtly because he seems to have some sinister agenda of his own. Howe alternates her narrative between Connie's groping attempts to track down the truth about the past and flashbacks to the real story of Deliverance Dane. We learn that she was a witch condemned in the 17th century, desperate for good reasons to keep her book hidden from ecclesiastical authorities. Informative, though not as creepy as it purports to be
.
Kirkus Review (May 15, 2009)
A first novel about alchemy, magic and witchcraft, set unsurprisingly in Salem, Mass., in the late 17th century and also, perhaps surprisingly, in Marblehead, Mass., in 1991. Connie Goodwin has just passed her doctoral oral exam in colonial American history at Harvard, and she looks forward to working with her mentor, Professor Manning Chilton, on breaking new ground in her dissertation. Then Connie gets an unexpected call from her New Age-y mother Grace, who is about to lose the house in Marblehead she inherited from her own mother because she's neglected for 20 years to pay the taxes on it--can Connie get it cleaned up and on the market for her? The house is, of course, eerie as well as abandoned. As Connie begins to look through Granna's house, she picks up an old Bible that gives her both an otherworldly feeling and an electric charge. Out of the Bible falls an antique key with a tiny scroll bearing the cryptic words "Deliverance Dane." Ever the good historian, Connie begins to track down the name. Eventually she finds allusions to a "Physick Book": a manual of medicine used by knowledgeable women in the colonial era, but also a book of spells. The volume seems ever more elusive as Connie's desire grows stronger to track it down. She's also feeling some uncomfortable pressure from Professor Chilton, who wants the book as badly as Connie, ostensibly because he thinks it will be helpful in a scholarly presentation he plans to make but more overtly because he seems to have some sinister agenda of his own. Howe alternates her narrative between Connie's groping attempts to track down the truth about the past and flashbacks to the real story of Deliverance Dane. We learn that she was a witch condemned in the 17th century, desperate for good reasons to keep her book hidden from ecclesiastical authorities. Informative, though not as creepy as it purports to be
Father of lies
Father of lies
by Turner, Ann Warren
Booklist (February 1, 2011 (Vol. 107, No. 11))
Grades 7-9. Waking in the night, 14-year-old Lidda is alarmed when she first sees the handsome, silver-eyed “creature” leaning against her bedroom wall and finds that she can hear his voice in her head. Her initial fear gives way to longing as the sensuous, insinuating, mysterious spirit, called Lucian, comes and goes in her mind, congratulating her for being different from the other girls in seventeenth-century Salem. When accusations of witchcraft lead toward deadly consequences, Lidda realizes that some of the accusers are lying and fears that she will be a victim of her community’s dangerous madness. The first appended author’s note discusses Lidda’s personal madness, bipolar illness, and a second separates history from fiction in the novel. Turner draws a powerful portrayal of Lidda’s troubled inner world without defining whether Lucian is real or imagined. Despite the well-researched and vividly imagined depiction of the setting, the novel and its heroine have a rather contemporary feel. A new story inspired by historical events in early America.
Reviews & Awards
Kirkus Review 01/01/11
School Library Journal 03/01/11
Publishers Weekly 11/29/10
Voice of Youth Advocates (V.O.Y.A.) 04/01/11
by Turner, Ann Warren
Booklist (February 1, 2011 (Vol. 107, No. 11))
Grades 7-9. Waking in the night, 14-year-old Lidda is alarmed when she first sees the handsome, silver-eyed “creature” leaning against her bedroom wall and finds that she can hear his voice in her head. Her initial fear gives way to longing as the sensuous, insinuating, mysterious spirit, called Lucian, comes and goes in her mind, congratulating her for being different from the other girls in seventeenth-century Salem. When accusations of witchcraft lead toward deadly consequences, Lidda realizes that some of the accusers are lying and fears that she will be a victim of her community’s dangerous madness. The first appended author’s note discusses Lidda’s personal madness, bipolar illness, and a second separates history from fiction in the novel. Turner draws a powerful portrayal of Lidda’s troubled inner world without defining whether Lucian is real or imagined. Despite the well-researched and vividly imagined depiction of the setting, the novel and its heroine have a rather contemporary feel. A new story inspired by historical events in early America.
Reviews & Awards
Kirkus Review 01/01/11
School Library Journal 03/01/11
Publishers Weekly 11/29/10
Voice of Youth Advocates (V.O.Y.A.) 04/01/11
The enemy within : a short history of witch-hunting
The enemy within : a short history of witch-hunting
by Demos, John
Reviews & Awards
Booklist 09/01/08
Library Journal 07/01/08
Kirkus Review 08/15/08
Publishers Weekly 09/08/08
by Demos, John
Booklist 09/01/08
Library Journal 07/01/08
Kirkus Review 08/15/08
Publishers Weekly 09/08/08
The Devil on Trial : witches, anarchists, atheists, communists, and terrorists in America's courtrooms
Grades 8-12. In this well-researched and affecting offering, Margulies and Rosaler tie some of the most important trials in American history to the country’s frequent need to find a “devil: not just a threat to the community, but an incarnation of evil.” Five cases are examined in depth: the Salem witch trials, in which the threat was literally the devil; the Haymarket bomb trial, which put anarchists in the devil’s suit; the Scopes “monkey trial,” in which evolution locked horns with religion; the Alger Hiss case, which pitted Communism and democracy; and the trials of Zacarias Moussaoui, the face of evil for a new century. With an oversize format, a crisp typeface, and an illustration-filled design, this is an appealing-looking read. However, it is not light reading; the depth in which the authors examine these trials is both complete and sobering, especially when set against whatever public sentiment was raging at the time. Putting these trials into a historical context is something they do particularly well. Readers will learn as much about why religion and science were butting heads in the 1920s as they will about the Scopes trial (which was originally a test case encouraged by the ACLU). Impeccably sourced, with an extensive bibliography, this examination does sometimes drop a few threads (what did happen to Salem’s Tituba?) and sometimes stretches the devil connection. Yet young people who spend time with this intriguing title will find themselves more deeply and thoughtfully informed about the U.S. and its legal system.
Title: The devil on trial : witches, anarchists, atheists, communists, and terrorists in America's courtrooms / by Phillip Margulies and Maxine Rosaler.
Reviews & Awards
Booklist starred 11/15/08
Voice of Youth Advocates (V.O.Y.A.) 08/01/08
Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books 10/01/08
Wilson's Junior High School 01/09/10
Horn Book 04/01/09
Wilson's Senior High School 06/01/10
School Library Journal 09/01/08
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