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Posted 20 hours ago

Jemmy Button

£9.9£99Clearance
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Jemmy Button, a native of Tierra del Fuego, was brought to England in the mid-1800s to be "educated and civilized. I understand simplifying events for children, but here that’s to the point of historical inaccuracy. The story is told in few words, but it is really the evocative illustrations in this book that makes this book great. I believe this could show a personal perspective of a boy who experienced a new culture but ultimately loved his own. Soon, he’s wearing their clothes, attending concerts, and even meeting the king and queen, but he never quite feels at home.

Delighted to be home, Jemmy immediately removed his clothes, relearned his native language and became part of his own culture again. Quite nice pictures soften the story of Orundellico, a boy of Tierra del Fuego, bought from his parents for a mother-of-pearl button and taken on the HMS Beagle to England to be "civilized. I found it truly hard to believe that his birth parents were not depicted visually (quite dehumanizing), and that they did not experience stress and loss--what did they think would happen if they didn't sell their child?One day, visitors from far away came and asked him to travel with them across the ocean to their land. The writing has completely whitewashed the true story of Jemmy Button, and it is a shame, as we should know what really happened. This may be a book that children are able to relate to particularly if they are new or have moved to a new area of for EAL children who are living in a different culture or experiencing different customs for the first time. The people who took him back to their land introduced him to so many new things and changed his style and his life in so many ways.

I believe Jemmy Button and his people were kidnapped and I would have preferred that to be depicted in the book. I know that this is a book for children, and I appreciate that the stories of lesser-known figures in history are being told, but I can’t co-sign a book that presents the story of white men taking a child away from his parents and parading him around England like a pet or a side show, as a morally neutral event. students may be able to relate to leaving "home" and having to try and make themselves feel at home somewhere else. How people get places and how interconnected we are as a world would be a point that I would want to highlight. Gouache, oil paintings, and collage illustrations present two extremely different worlds and the boy who travels between them.But other than the author mentioning that the boy missed the boughs of the trees and the night sky on his island home, the reader is never told about the difficulties that he must have faced in trying to assimilate into white society. I feel the illustrations throughout the story offer lots of deep thought and conversational points with the children, the idea of only Jemmy and his family being drawn with life like colour and all the European folk are silhouettes of varying degree, for me shows the strong link Jemmy will always have with home. Reaching the other side of the ocean, Jemmy finds houses made of rocks “stacked in towers taller than the tallest tree. I connect the sale of humans with slavery and human trafficking, yet there is no indication from the text that anyone should be considering questions of morality in relation to O'run-del'lico's experience. Maybe no written record exists of their care, but by not presenting the possibility of such, a young child might conclude that they were not "good" parents.

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