Digging a Hole to Heaven
Coal Miner Boys
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
At 12 years old, Conall has already worked in the coal mines of West Virginia for two years. He spends his days deep underground with his faithful mule, Angel, carting loads of coal back and forth between the coal seams and the main shaft, where elevators take the coal up to the surface. One day a tunnel collapses, and his brother is trapped with others on the wrong side! How can Conall and Angel help to save them?Mixing archival images with his original artwork, in this historical fiction picture book acclaimed author and illustrator S. D. Nelson gives voice to the poverty, grueling labor, and dangerous conditions experienced by child laborers across our nation in the past, echoing conditions today, especially for migrant fieldworkers.
Praise for Digging a Hole to Heaven
"Nelson’s acrylic-paint illustrations are gritty and realistic; more evocative still are the historical photographs that appear on nearly every page. A useful and thorough piece of work combining fiction and nonfiction, with an extensive author’s note detailing the history of coal mining."
--Kirkus Reviews
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Realistic acrylic illustrations sit alongside b&w archival photographs to tell the story of the boys who worked in the coal mines of 19th- and early-20th-century America. Nelson (Buffalo Bird Girl) uses Conall, a fictional 12-year-old Irish-American, and his mule, Angel, to craft a descriptive narrative around a typical day in the mine. "Conall, his face black with soot, rode on the front bumper of the empty car. The only light came from the yellow flame of his oil headlamp." Conall sings an Irish folk song about streams and birdsong while he works, poignantly highlighting the stark difference between above ground and the bleak environment where he spends his youth. Sidebars accompanying the photographs detail the different jobs boys performed as trappers, spraggers, breaker boys, and more. Extensive author notes offer brief histories of child and animal labor, robber barons, unions, and the Industrial Revolution, as each relates to coal mining. In a sometimes didactic, yet thought-provoking tone, Nelson brings his work of historical fiction into the present with discussions of climate change and current child labor abuses. Ages 8 12.
