A Doll's Life

Recommended grades 7-10.  Tanya Lee Stone dives into the life of American Sweetheart, Barbie with her unauthorized 'biography, ' The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie: A Doll's History and Her Impact on Us (Viking, 2011).  Stone covers a variety of aspects about the doll everyone loves to hate and hates to love, from the story of her creator, Ruth Handler, to her own development in the last fifty years.  Stone also approaches many of the criticisms Barbie has faced over the years, from her impossible-to-achieve figure, to her Euro-centric hair texture, Stone does not shy away from controversy.  Stone makes her voice quite clear as a researcher, openly explains her interpretations of her sources, and offers the final decision up to her readers; is Barbie to blame for anorexia or to celebrate for encouraging professional women?  In addition to her open tone, Stone includes a detailed list of source notes at the end of the text as well has a brimming bibliography.  The book is filled with black and white photos illustrating Stone's many points and showing Barbie over time.  Additionally, Stone includes a color insert of photos that benefit from full color.  This book is not only informative, it also serves as an excellent conversation starter and a model of good research.  Highly recommended, ****.

Chains

Grades 6-8.  Laurie Halse Anderson tells a different sort of coming-of-age story with her novel Chains (Athenium, 2008).

 Anderson follows Isabel, a young slave born with a kind and liberal master in Rhode Island but sold to cruel New York Loyalists at the height of America's War of Independence.  Through Isabel, Anderson explores the ambiguity of "freedom" on both sides of the war; she encounters Patriots who cry for freedom but are not willing to treat slaves as anything other than property, and Loyalists willing to free slaves, but only for the sake of harming the Patriot's cause.  Anderson's historical fiction is meticulously researched, she includes quotes from primary documents thematically as the header of each chapter and has a well cited list of historical questions in her final author's note.  History teachers will appreciate the possibility to use this book as a teaching tool both in content and in method.  Anderson offers a unique slave tale far away from the normal Civil War story and paints a complicated and rich story of American ideology that should raise stimulating questions in advanced readers minds. Highly Recommended, *****