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is a biography of Hines disguised as a 20th century photo documentary of how two million American children, some as young as three, where spending their long, dreary, hazardous days. It’s in fact brimming with his amazing photos of kids in coal mines, canneries, cotton fields and factories. I guarantee your child will be fascinated! 
It is a little eerie seeing eleven-year-old boys tend a blazing hot furnace with no adult supervision, so it may be crazy for me to say, but I can’t help but sense some pride in the faces of some of these capable children. Could twelve hour days have been scaled back to five hour weeks in lieu of cutting work out of children’s lives all together? Clobber me if you will, I'm just wondering. My son is 14 this summer and had high hopes of making money working at a marina near our house, but because of the child labor laws, he can’t be considered for employment until he is 16. My boy grew up around boats and helped bring a boat from the Bahamas to Florida in rough seas when one of the two adults on board was laid up with a bad back. He's earned his boating license, has several hours of flying time and scuba dives. He is quite capable of fueling a vessel, tying a line and helping passengers get their supplies on and off boats...but now he has to wait two more years in order to be paid for it.
On another note, we have a fig tree in our yard. It produced vast quantities of figs this year. My eleven-year-old daughter and her friends scrambled for every opportunity they could get to pick the fruit...because they loved doing it. I’ve heard that Georgia farmers were having a hard time finding fruit pickers this year because the state has scared illegal immigrants away. Why aren’t high school and college kids stepping in to fill the void? I remember my father’s tales of picking apples in upstate New York when he was a kid looking for a buck.
Well, I think Kids at Work
will be a great conversation starter at your house too. The book sums it up this way: “Hine’s images of working children stirred America’s conscience and helped change the nation’s laws. With his box camera and his sympathetic eye, he made a dramatic difference in people’s lives. In a real sense, the face of America never looked the same again.” Ages 6 and up
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Activity: For goodness sakes, learn how to peel your own shrimp:
you’ll learn how young Slater played the part of a farmer to get out of England with all those machinery designs safely tucked away—in his head.
, was Salisbury Cathedral. This amazing structure was built between 1220 and 1258. In trying to find a related book for children, the closest I could come was 
will leave you in complete awe of human achievement.
, a lot. As the book jacket states, her “strong will, shrewd diplomacy, religious tolerance, and love for her subjects won the hearts of her people and the admiration of her enemies.”
, is a fabulous book published by none other than National Geographic. It follows an archeologist as he tries to understand what possessed ancient Brits to place massive stones in a circle. After studying a predecessors notes he decides to look at it with fresh eyes and invites a Madagascar archeologist, who is unfamiliar with the site, to Stonehenge. This is a must own book for any child interested in archeology. They will learn how people are able to make contrasting interruptions and see how the ground contains hints of the past, if only you’ll look properly. As the author himself states, “This is a book about questioning what others believe to be true, not accepting ideas just because famous people say they are right.” You’ll have to read the book to see what secrets were unlocked :-)
. The illustrations are a-m-a-z-i-n-g. Creme da la creme of scratchboard I’d say. This book is as big and beautiful as the trees it documents. And what are those trees, you ask? Thousand year-old, New England pine trees, growing as tall as a twenty-five story building. They grew so tall and straight that they made ideal masts for England’s eighteenth-century navy. The story goes on to describe how the trees were chosen and plucked (not easily) from the forest and transported (forty oxen) to a river. You can’t help appreciating the ingenuity required to harvest the trees, while simultaneously despairing that the giants are all gone. But the author ends on a positive note, mentioning the promise in today’s woods. Giants are growing.
caught my eye over at the Palnetsme Plan blog recently. This looks like a great choice for all of us tall girls.
, Eva, real name Milada, makes the effort to always remember who she really is. And that someone is from Lidice, Czechoslovakia, where she was the fastest runner in school, loved to star gaze and ride bikes with her best friend, had a big brother, a baby sister, and a beloved grandmother, mother and father. She also had Aryan features, which is why the Germans snagged her.
takes you on a fascinating look at the man who was determined to invent mass–produced printing and persevered. It’s a wonderful lesson in persistence and a very interesting glimpse into 15th Century Germany.
