Book Review: Katie's Wish
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Reading Level |
Ages 4-8 |
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This is a
wonderful examination of the Irish potato famine and the
effect it had on people in Ireland and America. The author,
Barbara Shook Hazen, has taken this period in history and
shown it to us through the eyes of young Katie, who learns a
powerful lesson and witnesses history in the process.
Tired
of potatoes, which is all her family seems to eat, Katie
wishes that the potatoes would just go away. Soon after, the
potato blight hits. Potatoes turn black. Many people get
sick, including Katie's grandmother. Katie assumes that all
of that is her fault, for wishing the potatoes away.
Meanwhile,
her father has gone to America and is saving enough money to
send for her. (Her mother has recently died.) Katie is torn
between her love for her father and her need to stay with
the rest of her family.
The
illustrations, by Caldecott Medal winner Emily Arnold
McCully, are marvelous. In almost every case, the clothes
that Katie wears (and certainly her red hair) make her stand
out from the crowd. When Katie's favorite pet pig is sold at
market for money to buy food, you can see the anguish on
Katie's face. The illustrations do what they are supposed to
do: help the story along.
The
result is an excellent example of how kids, especially young
ones, equate things that aren't really related. Katie's
wishing the potatoes away didn't really cause the potato
blight and subsequent famine, but all she knows is that she
did the wishing and they "went away." The world is not so
often so black-and-white, and the adults in Katie's life
tell her so.
This is
also an excellent example of how history is seldom so
black-and-white. It is often thought that one thing caused
another or that only one outcome was possible. History is
just the present of earlier days; and just as with our own
present, which has a myriad of possibilities for even the
tiniest choices or cause and effect, so, too, did the past.
Things are always more complicated than they appear
at first glance, and the lesson that Katie learns in this
book is to look deeper, beyond the surface, to discover that
life is complicated and wonderful and open-ended.