Horn Book (Sun Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2004)

This retelling of "Little Red Riding Hood" is set in the desert and features a brown-skinned girl who encounters a hungry coyote while en route to her abuela's house. Polette smoothly integrates Spanish words into his text, and although Szegedy's busy illustrations would have benefited from a less anarchic palette, her coyote is a distinguished villain who gets his just desserts, Latin style. Glos.

Kirkus Reviews

An addition to the Issues in Focus library demonstrates that mass killing of civilians is not a practice unique to our century, but, as this grim tally shows, it has become horribly common in modern warfare. Using a mix of general statements and eyewitness accounts, Altman (Migrant Farm Workers, 1994, etc.) cites incidents from ancient history, the Crusades, and several massacres of Native American groups that presaged the large-scale exterminations of Armenians (more than 1 million), Jews (6 million), Poles and Gypsies (3 million, the other Holocaust''), Ukrainiankulaks'' (510 million), and Cambodians (23 million). She mentions more recent pogroms and civil wars in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Somaliathough not Afghanistan, India, or Timorand notes the worldwide growth of a ``New Tribalism'' that is fueling ethnic strife. The author closes with sage, if very general, advice for readers: Don't laugh at ethnic jokes, speak out against prejudice, and be aware that genocide has always begun in small steps, and would not be possible without the silenceand active participationof ordinary citizens. Solid background reading on this scary, controversial topic: concise, well-organized, thoroughly documented. (b&w photos, not seen, notes, large bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 12+)"

School Library Journal

Gr 7 Up-In 10 short chapters written with relatively easy vocabulary and comprehension level, Altman looks at specific instances of genocide, beginning with the Holocaust, and then goes on to describe less familiar examples throughout history. In so doing, she opens readers' minds to forms of genocide that are often only subconsciously acknowledged, e.g., starvation, introduction of fatal disease, exhaustion, exposure, etc. The book cites examples from the ancient Assyrians to contemporary situations as recent as Somalia and Bosnia. Black-and-white captioned photos heighten students' awareness of the horrors of genocide. Chapter notes give sources, and there is a lengthy bibliography. Samuel Totten and Milton Kleg's Human Rights (Enslow, 1988; o.p.) covers much of the same material in a chapter titled ``Genocide'' and in an appended listing of some of the genocidal acts that have occurred in this century. Altman's book will be more useful to students doing reports specifically on this subject.-Marilyn Fairbanks, East Junior High, Brockton, MA