Wikipedia (
visit link) informs us:
"Alcatraz Island is located in the San Francisco Bay, 1.5 miles (2.4 km) offshore from San Francisco, California, United States. Often referred to as "The Rock", the small island was developed with facilities for a lighthouse, a military fortification, a military prison (1868), and a federal prison from 1933 until 1963. Beginning in November 1969, the island was occupied for more than 19 months by a group of aboriginal people from San Francisco who were part of a wave of Native activism across the nation with public protests through the 1970s. In 1972, Alcatraz became a national recreation area and received designation as a National Historic Landmark in 1986.
Today, the island's facilities are managed by the National Park Service as part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area; it is open to tours. Visitors can reach the island by ferry ride from Pier 33, near Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco. Hornblower Cruises and Events, operating under the name Alcatraz Cruises, is the official ferry provider to and from the island. Hornblower launched the nation's first hybrid propulsion ferry in 2008, the Hornblower Hybrid, which now serves the island, docking at the Alcatraz Wharf.
It is home to the abandoned prison, the site of the oldest operating lighthouse on the West Coast of the United States, early military fortifications, and natural features such as rock pools and a seabird colony (mostly Western Gulls, cormorants, and egrets). According to a 1971 documentary on the History of Alcatraz, the island measures 1,675 feet (511 m) by 590 feet (180 m) and is 135 feet (41 m) at highest point during mean tide.[7] However, the total area of the island is reported to be 22 acres (8.9 ha)."
As for the book, Good Reads (
visit link) informs us:
"Al Capone Does My Shirts (Al Capone at Alcatraz #1)
by Gennifer Choldenko (Goodreads Author)
...
Today I moved to a twelve-acre rock covered with cement, topped with bird turd and surrounded by water. I'm not the only kid who lives here. There's my sister, Natalie, except she doesn't count. And there are twenty-three other kids who live on the island because their dads work as guards or cook's or doctors or electricians for the prison, like my dad does. Plus, there are a ton of murderers, rapists, hit men, con men, stickup men, embezzlers, connivers, burglars, kidnappers and maybe even an innocent man or two, though I doubt it. The convicts we have are the kind other prisons don't want. I never knew prisons could be picky, but I guess they can. You get to Alcatraz by being the worst of the worst. Unless you're me. I came here because my mother said I had to.
Paperback, 240 pages
Published April 20th 2006 by Puffin (first published January 1st 2004)
original titleAl Capone Does My Shirts
ISBN 0142403709 (ISBN13: 9780142403709)
edition languageEnglish
seriesAl Capone at Alcatraz #1
charactersAl Capone
settingCalifornia (United States)
Alcatraz Island, San Francisco, California , 1935 (United States)
San Francisco, California , 1935 (United States)
literary awardsNewbery Honor (2005), Kirkus Editor's Choice, Sid Fleischman Humor Award (2005), Rebecca Caudill Young Reader's Book Award Nominee (2006), The Judy Lopez Memorial Award for Children's Literature Honor (2005)"