'Secret School' a haven for a child during war


November 19, 2009|By Mary Harris Russell, SPECIAL TO TRIBUNE NEWSPAPERS

'Nasreen's Secret School'

By Jeanette Winter

Beach Lane, $16.99, ages 6-9

This story, subtitled "a true story from Afghanistan," is set in the 1996-2001 reign of the Taliban, and passed on by a founder of secret schools for girls with the names changed. Agrandmother from Herat - "where art and music and learning once flourished" - tells of changes the Taliban soldiers brought, so that little Nasreen cannot go to school to learn "about the world" the way her grandmother and mother did. Nasreen loses not only learning but family, as her father is dragged off by Taliban soldiers and her mother goes to search for him and doesn't return. So, even when her grandmother brings her to the secret school for girls, she sits, at first, mute, silenced by grief. Carefully framed pictures show the school, and the strategies used to hide and protect it. A brave community surrounds Nasreen and eventually draws forth her speech. Winter's somber palette brightens slightly, as Nasreen learns her culture's history and can "see the blue sky beyond those dark clouds." Fills in the human background to what is still, today, headline news.

'The Boy Who Invented TV: The Story of Philo Farnsworth'

By Kathleen Krull, illustrated by Greg Couch

Knopf, $16.99, ages 8-10

To young readers, the land before TV is so long ago it might have dinosaurs roaming it. Even those of us who think we remember that land place it somewhere in the late 1940s or early '50s. (If you can date yourself by using terms like "floor models" and "consoles," you'll enjoy the pictures.) Philo Farnsworth produced the first TV image in 1927. Clearly a mechanical genius from his preschool years, this quiet Idaho farm boy is said to have taken his inspiration for the parallel lines of the TV image transmission from lines of potato plantings. He aspired to be a great inventor - and Krull properly brings to life the popular science magazines of those days - whether it was his goal to help make farm chores faster or bring people together gathered around this new technology. His lack of business savvy meant that he lost the battle with RCA for proper credit and control, but he's a likable young man in this telling of his story.

'The Mitten'

Retold by Jim Aylesworth, illustrated by Barbara McClintock

Scholastic, $16.99, ages 4-7

How does McClintock move this traditional tale into something that, like that tiny lost mitten, holds our attention for a long time? It's a toss-up as to whether the winning factor involves a grandmother's love and knitting or a catalog of animals who might, randomly, prey upon each other but become winsome albeit strange bedfellows. I'm voting for the animals, who all share a desire any child can imagine: "Your mitten looks so cozy,/And warm toes would feel so nice." There's not much of a moral we can draw about the animals and the mitten, except some vague sense that there are limits to physical space. It's the nice coziness of it all - hot chocolate and newly knit cozy things, year after year - that finally compels our watching.

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