Evocative, though light on factual detail.
A tribute to the playful, creative husband-and-wife team who, as icons of midcentury modern design, brought us tiny tables and bent plywood chairs.
Rather than lay out specific biographical details, Yang focuses on the overall approach and sensibility that architect Charles Eames and painter Ray Eames brought to their artistic careers. Charles liked to work with structures; Ray was sensitive to color and shape. Together, Yang writes, “they made a perfect team.” They were “always looking for a problem to solve.” “Is there a way to make hanging up your clothes fun?” “Why do tables have to be big?” “How can we make toys both kids and adults will love?” Many of their designs are still manufactured, but the formfitting modern chair (which will probably always be their best-known work) gets pride of place as the product of a long process of trial and error that suggests how much hard work goes into the seemingly simple design of common objects. Incorporating colors and forms associated with their work, Yang depicts the couple as hands-on sorts, fiddling with wire, balls, and blocks in bright, airy workspaces or, in one scene, lying flat on the floor to appreciate a painting suspended from the ceiling. Readers may come away with an inkling of the Eameses’ artistic methods but will need to look elsewhere for more than a handful of actual examples of their creations.
Evocative, though light on factual detail. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 21, 2024
ISBN: 9780593404829
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
Innocuous adventuring on the smallest of scales.
The Mouse and the Motorcycle (1965) upgrades to The Mice and the Rolls-Royce.
In Windsor Castle there sits a “dollhouse like no other,” replete with working plumbing, electricity, and even a full library of real, tiny books. Called Queen Mary’s Dollhouse, it also plays host to the Whiskers family, a clan of mice that has maintained the house for generations. Henry Whiskers and his cousin Jeremy get up to the usual high jinks young mice get up to, but when Henry’s little sister Isabel goes missing at the same time that the humans decide to clean the house up, the usually bookish big brother goes on the adventure of his life. Now Henry is driving cars, avoiding cats, escaping rats, and all before the upcoming mouse Masquerade. Like an extended version of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Two Bad Mice (1904), Priebe keeps this short chapter book constantly moving, with Duncan’s peppy art a cute capper. Oddly, the dollhouse itself plays only the smallest of roles in this story, and no factual information on the real Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House is included at the tale’s end (an opportunity lost).
Innocuous adventuring on the smallest of scales. (Fantasy. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-6575-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
A succinct, edifying read, but don’t buy it for the pictures.
Abraham Lincoln’s ascent to the presidency is recounted in a fluid, easy-to-read biography for early readers.
Simple, direct sentences stress Lincoln’s humble upbringing, his honesty, and his devotion to acting with moral conviction. “Lincoln didn’t seem like a man who would be president one day. But he studied hard and became a lawyer. He cared about people and about justice.” Slavery and Lincoln’s signature achievement of emancipation are explained in broad yet defined, understandable analogies. “At that time, in the South, the law let white people own black people, just as they owned a house or a horse.” Readers are clearly given the president’s perspective through some documented memorable quotes from his own letters. “Lincoln did not like slavery. ‘If slavery is not wrong,’ he wrote to a friend ‘nothing is wrong.’ ” (The text does not clarify that this letter was written in 1865 and not before he ascended to the presidency, as implied by the book.) As the war goes on and Lincoln makes his decision to free the slaves in the “Southern states”—“a bold move”—Lincoln’s own words describe his thinking: “ ‘If my name ever goes into history,’ Lincoln said, ‘it will be for this act.’ ” A very basic timeline, which mentions the assassination unaddressed in the text, is followed by backmatter providing photographs, slightly more detailed historical information, and legacy. It’s a pity that the text is accompanied by unremarkable, rudimentary opaque paintings.
A succinct, edifying read, but don’t buy it for the pictures. (Informational early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: June 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-243256-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
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