cusnwalter's Full Review: Eve Bunting - Smoky Night
Helps teach children how to deal with race relations and riots.
I work at a children’s library helping three graders read, they read to me. This is one of the books we have given them to read. It’s a good book although I think it’s a little big for the age group… let me explain.
This book is about a little boy, a mother and a cat that live in an apartment building. They get along fine with the other people of their race but not the Asian lady; she owns a grocery store and a cat. The cats do not get along and neither do the people. The mother tells the little boy that we can’t go to her grocery store because we have to support our own race. At nighttime a riot brakes out on their street. The little boy along with his cat watches from the window as people throw things in store windows and start fires. The mother and son sleep together that night in her bed with there clothes on and shoes on, the mother does not explain to the boy why but tells him to do so. In the middle of the night they are woken up by smoke, their building is on fire. They run down stairs and are followed by the rest of the building only to find out that there cat and the Asian ladies cat are missing. They are forced to go sleep in a high school. The firefighters find both the cats lying curled up next to each other. Everyone becomes friends. The people realize that if the cats can get along than they can too.
It’s a good plot but there are some problems. I don’t think the book does a good job saying why it is wrong to only visit the other grocery store and not the other. They make it seem like that is ok. The moral at the end of the story was clear and the children did get it, but I think the book scared them a little.
The pictures in this book are excellent. The pages are filled with objects that relate to what the pages are about.
I would recommend this book for an older age group, the words were easy to say, no a lot of big ones. But the content is not suitable for those under 9. I don’t think they will understand it completely and because of this might get the wrong message.
During a night of rioting in Los Angeles, fires and looting force neighbors--who have always avoided one another--to come together. David Diaz was awa...More at HotBookSale
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