An excellent title that provides an admirably accurate picture of slavery in America for younger readers.
The White House is truly the people’s house.
From foundation to finish, many hands toiled to construct a home for the leader of the new country. Free men and slaves worked with stone, wood and brick, using hands that were both skilled and unskilled. Smith uses rhyming verse to tell their stories with words that are powerful and descriptive. They are constructed to be read aloud; performed, even. Cooper works in his signature palette of muted browns and yellows and succeeds admirably in depicting individualized faces filled with weariness and pride. The tedium of each step involved in the construction of the White House had more than one result. A beautiful building arose in Washington, D.C., only to be destroyed by the British in the War of 1812. Just as important, enslaved workers learned skills that brought in money that bought their freedom. By giving the slaves names, Smith elevates them from mere numbers to individuals determined to shape their lives for the better. “Month by month, / slave hands toil, / planting seeds of freedom / in fertile soil.”
An excellent title that provides an admirably accurate picture of slavery in America for younger readers. (author’s note, selected resources) (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-192082-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2012
Successful neither as biography nor sermon.
Our 16th president is presented as an activist for human and civil rights.
Lincoln resembles a doll with an oversized head as he strides through a first-person narrative that stretches the limits of credulity and usefulness. From childhood, Abe, bearded and sporting a stovepipe hat, loves to read, write and look out for animals. He stands up to bullies, noting that “the hardest fights don’t reveal a winner—but they do reveal character.” He sees slaves, and the sight haunts him. When the Civil War begins, he calls it a struggle to end slavery. Not accurate. The text further calls the Gettysburg ceremonies a “big event” designed to “reenergize” Union supporters and states that the Emancipation Proclamation “freed all those people.” Not accurate. The account concludes with a homily to “speak louder then you’ve ever spoken before,” as Lincoln holds the Proclamation in his hands. Eliopoulos’ comic-style digital art uses speech bubbles for conversational asides. A double-page spread depicts Lincoln, Confederate soldiers, Union soldiers, white folk and African-American folk walking arm in arm: an anachronistic reference to civil rights–era protest marches? An unsourced quotation from Lincoln may not actually be Lincoln’s words.
Successful neither as biography nor sermon. (photographs, archival illustration) (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8037-4083-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
Even very young dinosaur devotees will have no trouble finding better pickings elsewhere.
A pooch with, in previous outings, a penchant for straying touristically in various modern cities takes a quick scoot through the age of the dinosaurs, and after.
Having dozed off while his human buddy Pete is studying, Larry “wakes” beneath the feet of a huge, plant-eating sauropod and then flees from a T. Rex, going past various armored and feathered dinos. He goes on to get glimpses of Cretaceous fliers and swimmers, then trots through the Cenozoic Era to the Stone Age and, at last, his modern dinner. In illustrations that look like scraped screen prints, the prehistoric critters are recognizable in shape but monochromatically colored. The often low-contrast or pastel hues are as flat as the main narrative’s verse: “These guys look scary, / With armor and spikes. / But that’s just for defense; / It’s plants that they like.” Along with unexplained terminology (“Cretaceous-Paleogene Extinction Event”), the accompanying prose captions offer such awkwardly phrased gems as: “If something becomes buried under the right conditions, the evidence of it can last for millions of years.”
Even very young dinosaur devotees will have no trouble finding better pickings elsewhere. (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-57061-862-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sasquatch
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2013
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