Who Was Sacagawea? GB

Judy Fradin is the co-author, along with her late husband Dennis, of more than 50 non-fiction children's and young adult books on topics ranging from biographies to natural disasters to African American history to the Lewis and Clark expedition.  Their IDA B. WELLS:  MOTHER OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT won the Flora Steiglitz Straus award as well as the Golden Kite honor plaque.  STOLEN INTO SLAVERY was a Carter Woodson award winner, as was THE POWER OF ONE:  DAISY BATES AND THE LITTLE ROCK NINE.   WHO WAS SACAGAWEA? was the Fradins' first collaboration for the WHO WAS? series.  Between 2007 and 2015, Judy was a professor of Children's Literature and Minority Literature at National Louis University.
The author of more than 225 children's and young adult non-fiction books, Dennis Brindell Fradin was the winner of many awards, including the Flora Steiglitz Straus best non-fiction book of the year, two Carter Woodson awards, a Golden Kite honor plaque, and three Society of Midland Authors Best Book prizes, Dennis prided himself on writing graceful, readable prose for young people.  A born storyteller, the decade he spent as a second-grade teacher helped him perfect his fluid style of writing for children.

Grade 3-5-This accessible, accurate biography provides brief contextual information about the tribes in which Sacagawea lived, from her own people, the Shoshone, to her captors, the Minnetaree and Mandan. Since almost all that is known about her is from the journals of the Lewis and Clark expedition, this work necessarily focuses on that event and her part in it. Unfortunately, the black-and-white illustrations are dreadful. The cover borders on caricature and does nothing to invite interest or non-prejudicial awareness. The sketches of Lewis and Clark within the text are equally bad. Only those that detail specific material, such as a Shoshone tipi, Mandan lodge, or travois pass muster as good, informative, and text-enhancing. Another problem with the book is the lack of source information. David A. Adler's A Picture Book of Sacagawea (Holiday, 2000) is for younger students and Judith St. George's Sacagawea (Putnam, 1997), for older readers. Wait for a better choice to fill the gap.
Nancy Collins-Warner, Neill Public Library, Pullman, WA
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