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Plymouth Rocks!: The Stone-Cold Truth

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Plymouth Rocks!: The Stone-Cold Truth

eBook(NOOK Kids)

$9.99

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eBook(NOOK Kids)
$9.99

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Overview

Prolific storyteller Jane Yolen marks the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower's arrival by channeling the voice of Plymouth Rock itself. A funny (and fact-checked!) look at a historical monument.

The history of Plymouth Rock is explained--by the rock itself. Playful, clever verses offer a comprehensive window into the events leading up to the 1620 landing and beyond, dispelling common misconceptions along the way. Alternating with Rock's poems is a witty analysis of the truthfulness of its statements, told in the voice of the Fact Checker. Truly a book for today's savvy media consumers.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781632898326
Publisher:	Charlesbridge
Publication date:	09/08/2020
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	32
Lexile:	790L (what's this?)
File size:	46 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Jane Yolen is the award-winning author of over three hundred children's books including Last Laughs: Prehistoric Epitaphs; Last Laughs: Animal Epitaphs; Bad Girls (with Heidi E. Y. Stemple); Owl Moon, a Caldecott Medal Winner; the How Do Dinosaurs . . . ? series; and Sea Queens. She has been called the Hans Christian Andersen of the Americas.

Sam Streed is a children's book author/illustrator, game artist, and animator. He is the author/illustrator of Alfred's Book of Monsters and is a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design.

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Editorial Reviews

In this informative picture book, the anthropomorphic Plymouth Rock describes its history. An unnamed fact checker, who appears to be a light-skinned young woman with red glasses and a bun, confirms or corrects the rock’s story. The rock’s rhyming prose is written on an unrolled scroll of paper. Red ink is used to clarify or dispel the rock’s take on its own history. For example, “The disembarkers stepped on me,/ first footfalls toward their liberty,” claims the rock. However, the fact checker writes, “No large rock or stepping stone is mentioned in any of the travelers’ journals or logs.” Yolen also addresses the Indigenous community. The fact checker provides an honest account of how the colonizers impacted Native people: “More and more colonists soon arrived and took Native land to build their houses. They treated the Native people brutally and dishonestly.” Both Yolen’s text and Streed’s cartoon illustrations are inviting. At times the poetry is a tad awkward (“Now placed in/ a portico,/ my life once more/ is put on show”) but in general, the poetry keeps pace with the prose. This title is best suited to an audience who has some familiarity with Plymouth Rock. VERDICT Humorous pictures supplement prose and poetry to create a unique, clever, engaging picture book about one aspect of early American history.
—School Library Journal

From the Publisher

08/14/2020
K-Gr 2—In this informative picture book, the anthropomorphic Plymouth Rock describes its history. An unnamed fact checker, who appears to be a light-skinned young woman with red glasses and a bun, confirms or corrects the rock's story. The rock's rhyming prose is written on an unrolled scroll of paper. Red ink is used to clarify or dispel the rock's take on its own history. For example, "The disembarkers stepped on me,/ first footfalls toward their liberty," claims the rock. However, the fact checker writes, "No large rock or stepping stone is mentioned in any of the travelers' journals or logs." Yolen also addresses the Indigenous community. The fact checker provides an honest account of how the colonizers impacted Native people: "More and more colonists soon arrived and took Native land to build their houses. They treated the Native people brutally and dishonestly." Both Yolen's text and Streed's cartoon illustrations are inviting. At times the poetry is a tad awkward ("Now placed in/ a portico,/ my life once more/ is put on show") but in general, the poetry keeps pace with the prose. This title is best suited to an audience who has some familiarity with Plymouth Rock. VERDICT Humorous pictures supplement prose and poetry to create a unique, clever, engaging picture book about one aspect of early American history.—Anne Chapman Callaghan, Racine P.L., WI

School Library Journal

2020-09-01
Plymouth Rock is a great big liar.
Fortunately, the googly-eyed, sentient hunk of granite has a fact checker, a bespectacled brown-skinned person with a very active red pen. Rock narrates in verse, informing readers of its glacial origins, the local wildlife, its Native neighbors, the arrival of English settlers, and the myths that gradually arose around it. As the rock versifies, the fact checker busily marks up Streed’s cartoon spreads. “Hold on a minute!” reads one note on a fulsome description of how “the tribes” met the settlers “with a great burst of friendship, food, community.” Another vigorously circled note reads, “Native people did greet the colonists and later shared food with them, but that is NOT the whole story.” It’s a clever device, allowing Rock to pontificate with corrective annotations to set the record straight, but unfortunately, Rock’s story (as opposed to the story of the humans around it) is not interesting enough to sustain 32 pages. In fact, it’s something of a snooze (it was moved, dropped, broken, chipped away at, be-plaqued, and literally enshrined). It’s critical that readers learn that “settlers didn’t just ‘find’ a new world, they colonized it” and that “the Native people…did not consider their world new,” but this may not be the best vehicle.
The narrative isn’t substantial enough to sustain the needed counternarrative. (bibliography) (Informational picture book. 5-8)

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