These one-page sketches of 13 Jewish-American figures attempt to serve as an introduction to the one “defining moment” that shaped their lives or professions. Using information taken from books, articles, personal accounts, diaries, journals and interviews, Rappaport recreates, with some drama and undocumented dialogue, momentary accomplishments or significant episodes. While some of her portrayals work well to capture the nuance of the influential event, others are not as obvious. For example, she tells clearly of Asser Levy’s fight against anti-Semitism in colonial New Amsterdam, Ernestine Rose’s participation in the suffrage movement and Jacob W. Davis’s invention of the use of copper rivets on miners’ pants leading to the famous Levi Strauss jeans. But at the same time it’s not obvious as to what Houdini or photographer Solomon Nunes Carvalho’s defining moments really are. Even the last description for Steven Spielberg is a bit muddled, ending with his foremost deed of establishing the “Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation.” While many of these figures deserve a broader approach than these snippets, this collection may at least spark some interest for further reading. (sources, bibliography, Web sites) (Nonfiction. 7-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-688-17150-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2005
Strong rhythms and occasional full or partial rhymes give this account of P.T. Barnum’s 1884 elephant parade across the newly opened Brooklyn Bridge an incantatory tone. Catching a whiff of public concern about the new bridge’s sturdiness, Barnum seizes the moment: “’I will stage an event / that will calm every fear, erase every worry, / about that remarkable bridge. / My display will amuse, inform / and astound some. / Or else my name isn’t Barnum!’” Using a rich palette of glowing golds and browns, Roca imbues the pachyderms with a calm solidity, sending them ambling past equally solid-looking buildings and over a truly monumental bridge—which soars over a striped Big Top tent in the final scene. A stately rendition of the episode, less exuberant, but also less fictionalized, than Phil Bildner’s Twenty-One Elephants (2004), illustrated by LeUyen Pham. (author’s note, resource list) (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-44887-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
Spinning lively invented details around skimpy historical records, Taylor profiles the 19th-century chef credited with inventing the potato chip. Crum, thought to be of mixed Native-American and African-American ancestry, was a lover of the outdoors, who turned cooking skills learned from a French hunter into a kitchen job at an upscale resort in New York state. As the story goes, he fried up the first batch of chips in a fit of pique after a diner complained that his French fries were cut too thickly. Morrison’s schoolroom, kitchen and restaurant scenes seem a little more integrated than would have been likely in the 1850s, but his sinuous figures slide through them with exaggerated elegance, adding a theatrical energy as delicious as the snack food they celebrate. The author leaves Crum presiding over a restaurant (also integrated) of his own, closes with a note separating fact from fiction and also lists her sources. (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-58430-255-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lee & Low Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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