A timely book about the importance of persevering in the struggle for equality.
A girl recounts the struggles she and her friends went through to be admitted to an all-white school in Rigaud and Penn’s nonfiction picture book.
Narrated in the voice of Black student marcher Joyce Clemons, the story opens with Joyce explaining that she and her fellow students had to walk 600 miles to be treated fairly at school. When Joyce was young in the 1950s, even though segregation was against the law, the Hillsboro School Board wouldn’t let Black students attend Webster Elementary, an all-white school, even after a fire had damaged a Hillsboro school Black students attended. Together, Black mothers and students marched to Webster every day, only to be turned away at the door. But they kept going: “We stepped over the box lines on the calendar, across the rows of dates, and down the page, until it flipped and we started at the top again.” They marched for 300 days—two school years—before a judge ruled in their favor. Rigaud and Penn navigate themes of injustice and prejudice from a child’s eye view, making it easy to see that the system wrongly kept Joyce and her friends out. Lilly’s painterly digital illustrations integrate photographs and news clippings, firmly grounding the story in historical evidence. The book includes portraits of the 19 mothers who marched, and endnotes offer a timeline and further historical details.
A timely book about the importance of persevering in the struggle for equality.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780999661383
Page Count: 46
Publisher: Daydreamers Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Lovely illustrations wasted on this misguided project.
The Celebrate the World series spotlights Lunar New Year.
This board book blends expository text and first-person-plural narrative, introducing readers to the holiday. Chau’s distinctive, finely textured watercolor paintings add depth, transitioning smoothly from a grand cityscape to the dining room table, from fantasies of the past to dumplings of the present. The text attempts to provide a broad look at the subject, including other names for the celebration, related cosmology, and historical background, as well as a more-personal discussion of traditions and practices. Yet it’s never clear who the narrator is—while the narrative indicates the existence of some consistent, monolithic group who participates in specific rituals of celebration (“Before the new year celebrations begin, we clean our homes—and ourselves!”), the illustrations depict different people in every image. Indeed, observances of Lunar New Year are as diverse as the people who celebrate it, which neither the text nor the images—all of the people appear to be Asian—fully acknowledges. Also unclear is the book’s intended audience. With large blocks of explication on every spread, it is entirely unappealing for the board-book set, and the format may make it equally unattractive to an older, more appropriate audience. Still, readers may appreciate seeing an important celebration warmly and vibrantly portrayed.
Lovely illustrations wasted on this misguided project. (Board book. 4-8)Pub Date: Dec. 11, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3303-8
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute.
Readers bid farewell to a beloved canine character.
Momo is—or was—an adorable and very photogenic border collie owned by author Knapp. The many readers who loved him in the previous half-dozen books are in for a shock with this one. “Momo had died” is the stark reality—and there are no photographs of him here. Instead, Momo has been replaced by a flat cartoonish pastiche with strange, staring round white eyes, inserted into some of Knapp’s photography (which remains appealing, insofar as it can be discerned under the mixed media). Previous books contained few or no words. Unfortunately, virtuosity behind a lens does not guarantee mastery of verse. The art here is accompanied by words that sometimes rhyme but never find a workable or predictable rhythm (“We’d fetch and we’d catch, / we’d run and we’d jump. Every day we found new / games to play”). It’s a pity, because the subject—a pet’s death—is an important one to address with children. Of course, Momo isn’t gone; he can still be found “everywhere” in memories. But alas, he can be found here only in the crude depictions of the darling dog so well known from the earlier books.
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781683693864
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
