Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine, 1845-1850 - Softcover

Bartoletti, Susan Campbell

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0618548831 ISBN 13: 9780618548835

Publisher: Clarion Books, 2005

Synopsis

In 1845, a disaster struck Ireland. Overnight, a mysterious blight attacked the potato crops, turning the potatoes black and destroying the only real food of nearly six million people.

Over the next five years, the blight attacked again and again. These years are known today as the Great Irish Famine, a time when one million people died from starvation and disease and two million more fled their homeland.
Black Potatoes is the compelling story of men, women, and children who defied landlords and searched empty fields for scraps of harvested vegetables and edible weeds to eat, who walked several miles each day to hard-labor jobs for meager wages and to reach soup kitchens, and who committed crimes just to be sent to jail, where they were assured of a meal. It’s the story of children and adults who suffered from starvation, disease, and the loss of family and friends, as well as those who died. Illustrated with black and white engravings, it’s also the story of the heroes among the Irish people and how they held on to hope.

About this title

About the Author:

Susan Campbell Bartoletti is the award-winning author of several books for young readers, including Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine, 1845–1850, winner of the Robert F. Sibert Medal. She lives in Moscow, Pennsylvania. Visit her website at www.scbartoletti.com.

From School Library Journal:

Gr 6-10-When most American teens talk about hunger, it's that growling sensation before meals. Famine is beyond their ken, an abstraction made only marginally concrete by TV images of the Third World. In the Irish potato famine of 1845-50, it was Europeans starving to death, and the impact on Ireland (one million dead, two million fled) and on the U.S. was staggering (those immigrants came here). The chronology of the disaster unfolds in this gruelingly poignant text that draws heavily on news reports and first-person narratives. Bartoletti's title also incorporates period pen-and-ink sketches and poetry laying bare the fragility, injustice, and stratification of Irish peasant society that could not cope with agricultural tumult. People lived on potatoes-and only potatoes-while growing profitable exports for British landlords. When the crops mysteriously failed repeatedly over the next five years, the peasants simply starved to death while the social structure of the society nearly died along with the populace. Relief efforts were brutally incompetent where they existed at all, and only the Quakers emerge as heroes of mercy. The bibliography (also narrative) provides some of the most fascinating historical reading in the book. Overall, a useful addition to collections, for both personal and research uses.

Mary R. Hofmann, Rivera Middle School, Merced, CA

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Clarion Books
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0618548831
• ISBN 13: 9780618548835
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192