In the spring of 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt took a long trip to the far American West and capped his visit with a four-day camping trip through Yosemite with famed naturalist John Muir. Dodging persistent reporters, the men rode through ancient sequoia forests, climbed Glacier Peak and camped at the foot of Bridalveil Fall. As detailed in an author’s note, the trip likely played a significant role in Roosevelt’s later conservation efforts. Wadsworth’s research is sound, her writing spritely and her information interesting, but she reports the story instead of telling it, and she does so in so much detail that the amount of print overwhelms Dugan’s otherwise serviceable watercolors. Half the words would have twice the value; as written, it’s not detailed enough for older readers, who will gravitate toward chapter books, but too much for younger readers and downright daunting as a read-aloud. Some of Roosevelt’s quotes (“I want to drop politics absolutely for four days”) are authentic and sourced; others (“This is bullier yet!”) are “created by the author based upon typical language of Roosevelt”—an unfortunate license. (author’s, biographical notes) (Picture book. 7-10)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-59078-497-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Calkins Creek/Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2009
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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