.jpeg?picon=2982)
Classroom Connections is a series meant to introduce teachers to new books.
CHAINED - Lynne Kelly
Lynne Kelly has written a story that unwraps the heart and asks it to be brave, loyal, and above all, kind. Readers of all ages will worry for Hastin as he marks the wall that records his bondage to a cruel master, but they will ultimately celebrate his jubilant triumph. This story unwrapped my own heart. –Kathi Appelt, author of the Newbery Honor and New York Times bestseller THE UNDERNEATH
reading level: 10 and up
setting: Northern India
Please tell us about your book.
By: shelf-employed,
on 11/8/2010
Blog: Shelf-employed (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: history, book review, nonfiction, London, series, J, Non-Fiction Monday, Victorian Era, poverty, Magic Tree House, child labor, Add a tag
Osborne, Mary Pope and Natalie Pope Boyce. 2010. Rags and Riches: Kids in the Time of Charles Dickens. (Magic Tree House Research Guide series #22)New York: Random House.
This is the companion book to A Ghost Tale for Christmas Time, a historical fantasy romp through Dickens' A Christmas Carol,which is why it has the subtitle, Kids in the Time of Charles Dickens, when "Kids in the Victorian Era" might seem more logical.
Charles Dickens lived from 1812 - 1870, largely in the Victoria Era. Queen Victoria reigned from 1837- 1901. Rich or poor, life was difficult for Britain's children in those days. Rich children suffered from serious diseases and were raised largely apart from their parents. Boys were sent away to strict schools while girls studied at home with a governess those subjects which were thought most likely to win them a suitable husband - French, dancing, drawing, music. Of course, they were still much better off than the poor children and street children who filled the streets of London. They slept outside in rags or lived in debtors' prisons or squalid housing. They often worked in dangerous factories for long hours with little or no pay - beginning as young as five years old! Cholera and typhoid were epidemic. Life for a poor child in the time of Charles Dickens was wretched. Rags to Riches explains all these facets of Victorian Era life and more, with liberal use of sketches and period photographs.
It is doubtful that any child can read the accounts in the chapter, "Jobs for Poor Kids," and not be affected. Imagine life as a climbing boy, often only five or six years old,
Since they were small, they could squeeze through narrow parts of the chimney.Quite a different reality from the friendly, Bert, of Mary Poppins fame!
Climbing boys climbed to the top of the chimney and swept the coal dust out on their way back down. They got cuts and bruises from the jagged bricks. To toughen up their skin, salt water was rubbed into it.
If the boys got scared and stopped climbing, the chimney sweeps jabbed their feet with pins or lit fires to keep them moving. At times climbing boys got burned or stuck in the chimneys and suffocated.
A children's highlight from the Victoria Era? The birth of the modern children's picture book - Beatrix Potter's illustrated Tales of Peter Rabbit. Of course, without money, poor children likely only glimpsed the tiny little books through shop windows.
This is not an easy topic for which to create a research guide. A chronological approach does not work well, and the many aspects of a child's life are almost too large in scope for a book of this small scale. Still, Pope has created a semblance of order, dividing the topic into six chapters: 'Hard Times for Kids," "What Charles Dickens Saw," "The London of Dickens," "Jobs for Poor Kids," Rich Kids," and "How
By: Annette,
on 9/18/2010
Blog: A Garden of Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Child Labor, Add a tag
A child working in a cotton mill.
A picture from 1909, children that want to abolish slavery--child labor.
Another photo of child labor 1910.
Child labor is still common in some parts of the world, picture below is of a child in Vietnam.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labor_laws_in_the_United_States
Blissful Blogging!
Annette
By: shelf-employed,
on 8/28/2010
Blog: Shelf-employed (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: YA, book review, J, thriller, suspense, finance, debt, dystopian fiction, child labor, Advance Reader Copy, Add a tag
 |
| This is the final cover art. Advance Review Copies differ. |
(Advance Reader Copy)
from The Limit
...I heard a sharp gasp from Mom’s checkout worker. My eyes shot up. Checkout Lady had her hand over her mouth. Mom seemed unflustered. Checkout Lady must have made a mistake. I kept reading. ... The usual noise and confusion of the megastore around me dimmed. It was like it faded to almost nothing, leaving only the voices of my mom and Checkout Lady Even Abbie put a lid on her usual nonstop chatter and stuck her thumb in her mouth. I thought she’d stopped sucking her thumb a long time ago.
“I’m sure it’s a mistake,” Mom said. “A computer glitch somewhere.”
Checkout Lady punched a few buttons on her computer while her front teeth gnawed her lower lip like a beaver working a tree. “I’m sorry. It’s not a mistake. You’re over your limit.”
An electric current zapped through me. No. Wait. Stuff like this didn’t happen to our family.
But 13-year-old Matt was mistaken. It did happen to his family, and now he was the one chosen by the Federal Debt Rehabilitation Agency (FDRA) to repay his family’s debt under Federal Debt Ordinance 169, Option D which decrees compulsory service in an FDRA workhouse. Whisked away from his family by a burly guard and smooth-talking, Miss Smoot, Matt is taken to a workhouse without so much as a change of clothes. Likely based on his above average intelligence, Matt is designated a “Top Floor,” and receives a challenging job, a rigorous school curriculum, and plush accommodations. Unable to contact the outside world, he learns to live with his fellow “top floors,” Coop, Jeffrey, Isaac, Paige, Neela, Kia, Madeline, and the unseen and mysterious Reginald. At first glance, all appears in order at the workhouse, but Matt and his friends begin to discover something more threatening than unpaid debts at the Midwest Federal Debt Rehabilitation Agency workhouse.
Matt narrates this thriller about a high-tech society in which the government assigns every family a spending limit based on its income - not just any limit - the limit, the limit that cannot be exceeded without the direst of consequences. Eye scans and Big Brother-style monitoring are commonplace in this society that readers will find much like our own, where advertising and consumerism reign supreme. Although The Limit’s premise is the consequence of negligent overspending, the heart of the story is the high-tech, cat-and-mouse game between the brilliant “top floors” and the outwardly beautiful but sinister Miss Smoot, as Matt and his fellow inmates make increasingly shocking revelations as they attempt to discover the story of the other workhouse floor assignments and the headaches plaguing some inhabitants. Cautionary, but not didactic, The Limit is sure
By: Susan Kuklin,
on 8/26/2009
Blog: I.N.K.: Interesting Non fiction for Kids (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: slave labor, finding the truth, Iqbal Masih, child labor, bonded labor, Add a tag
As David pointed out two days ago, “facts are a squirmier subject than many people realize.”
When he was four-years-old, Iqbal Masih was sold to a carpet thekedar (employer or boss) for $12, in Pakistan. Like millions – and millions – of children throughout the world, he worked long hours in a dark, airless, carpet “factory,” sometimes chained to a loom, often beaten, poorly fed. At age twelve, Iqbal was set free with the help of the Bonded Labor Liberation Front (BLLF), a non governmental agency (NGO) whose focus was liberating slave laborers. Iqbal was a remarkable boy. He became a spokesperson for the reform movement in his country and personally helped save thousands of other enslaved children. For his efforts Iqbal received the Reebok Human Rights Award. 
He traveled to The US where he spoke at a black tie gala, was “Person of the Week” on ABC, and made an impression with students his age in elementary schools. Iqbal returned home and was murdered.
Who killed Iqbal Masih?
The BLLF believed that their poster boy was a contract killing paid for by carpet dealers who were afraid that his campaign could put an end to cheap, bonded labor. Another NGO, The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an organization that takes on a broad range of human rights abuses, also investigated the crime. They concluded that the killer was a neighbor, high on bhang, who was caught having sex with a donkey. Yes, you read that right. Try finding language to describe donkey-love to an eighth grade audience! As the report describes it, Iqbal, his cousin, and a friend were biking down the isolated road and saw the neighbor mid act. They teased, he shot. The neighbor, in fact, confessed to the crime. Later he recanted his confession.
Both NGOs came to separate conclusions. Who was right? How do we, as writers, determine truth when it is ambiguous, or when there is unsubstantiated evidence?
A breakfast conversation with my husband:
Bailey: There’s a difference between what the truth is and how we know what the truth is. We know, for example, that Darwin published The Origin of the Species in 1859. There is no reason to doubt this fact.
Susan: But when I wrote Iqbal’s story, there was conflicting evidence, evidence that constantly changed. Also, there were special interest groups who had different stakes in the outcome.
Bailey: That’s the problem. At what point do you decide to go with one version and ignore others?
Well, writers … how do you decide? This is one of those slippery slope issues we often face. When I wrote Iqbal Masih and the Crusaders Against Child Slavery, I had access to materials from both human rights organizations. I spoke with lawyers, rights activists, and people who knew Iqbal. Still, I was unable to reach a confident conclusion. This was the first time I centered a book about a person I had never met. It was nerve wracking. For me it is far easier, safer, to interview a subjects and then write in their voices. I become the conduit for their thoughts, ideas, and experiences. Their facts are the book’s truth. Evidence does not have to be weighed to make “fact” decisions. Sure, there are some issues of truth that need to be addressed – inconsistencies and contradictions – that I may not have picked up during the interview, but I could always go back to my source. After doing interviews for No Choirboy: Murder, Violence, and Teenagers on Death Row, I found a bunch of inconsistencies. But, for the most part, I did have captive subjects. Awful pun, please forget I wrote that. At any rate, my imprisoned subjects and I wrote letters back and forth until we were both certain that what was said was exactly what was meant. Their truth was the truth I was concerned about.
Iqbal was dead and my sources disagreed with one another. What to do? I decided to write both conclusions. Writing both narratives and giving them equal weight turned out to have an unexpected benefit. The readers now had opposing material for debates. And they did. In the classroom and privately. With passion and conviction.
Darwin published his book in 1889. My husband and I had cereal and fruit for breakfast. Two truths! Who murdered Iqbal? Only the killer knows for sure.
Susan Kuklin
This sounds so good. Thank you for the recommendation and the interview, Caroline!
I cannot wait to read this. Thank you both for the interview.