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

Title: Black Potatoes : The Story of the Great Irish Famine, 1845-1850
Author: Susan Campbell Bartoletti
Genre: Non-Fiction
Publisher:Houghton Mifflin, 2001

Winner of the Sibert Award (Children's Information Book) 2002

Black Potatoes tells the story of a country's disaster. In 1845, 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. This continued 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.
It is a horrifying, depressing and moving story of the Irish people. It includes memories, letters, diaries and newspaper articles. The pictures originally published in the "Illustrated London News" are wonderful. A timeline of events is also included at the end of the book. She also includes a follow up on some of the people in the story.
This was a wonderful book. Although I heard of the potato famine, I never new the details and how it was such a horrific time in history. It makes angry and depressed to know how the country was so ill-equipped to deal with the crisis and what little help they received from other countries. She details the general ignorance of the cause of the blight and the sometimes well-meaning but misguided attempts of different people to remedy the situation.
I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in history.
I would recommend it for grades 6 and up.

For the hook I would ask "Who has ever felt that they were starving" I would then show them the pictures of what starving really means. I would also read some passages including:
"As people grew hungrier and hungrier, they became more daring. The men used to steal the tails of the bulls. They would wait until the landlord was gone to bed, then steal out and cut of the tails. They would skin them and roast them."
"While a few men held the cows, another cut a vein in its neck, drained off a few pints of blood into a vessel, then pinned the incision closed. The men carried it back to their wives, who fried it with mushrooms and cabbages. It was a good source of protein."
"One shopkeeper remembered a mother who cradled a malnourished baby in her arms. The poor little thing was gaunt and kept whining for something to eat. He gave the mother some milk, but later that day, he found her lying dead by the roadside. The baby was still alive in her arms."
These stories go on and on.