Kid Blink Beats the World
Grade 3-6–"It was all for a penny…in the summer of 1899, Kid Blink, Race Track Higgins, Tiny Tim, Crutch Morris, and Crazy Arborn battled the world for a penny." That "world" was Joseph Pulitzer's The World newspaper (along with Randolph Hearst's The Journal), and that penny was a very important penny, indeed. Kids today may not understand the big deal, but when presented with this lively account of the facts of life in the day when "newsies" sold papers on street corners and 15 cents paid for dinner, they may have a better grasp of the elements of economics, the power of a penny, and the strength of organized labor. Subdued washes of sepia, lavender, and gray temper this telling of the sometimes-violent lengths to which hundreds of working children went to make themselves heard above the likes of Pulitzer and Hearst, and Brown's pictures have a sketched-quick quality that at once conveys the movement and the momentum of this slice of our history.  An author's note and brief bibliography give sources and qualifiers. Add this catalyst for conversation about labor laws and workers' rights to Kathleen Krull'sHarvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez(Harcourt, 2003),Holly Littlefield's Fire at the Triangle Factory(Sagebrush, 1996), and (for older audiences) Russell Freedman's seminal piece,Kids at Work: Lewis Hine and the Crusade Against Child Labor(Clarion, 1994).–Kathy Krasniewicz, Perrot Library, Old Greenwich, CTCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.