Though the Wright brothers both credited their sister Katharine as a partner in their grand enterprise, she seldom emerges from the biographical shadows. Here Yolen (Atalanta and the Arcadian Beast, p. 244, etc.) tries, and fails, to redress this, describing from Katharine’s point of view how the brothers’ early interest in tinkering with machines grew into a nearly full-time, ultimately successful, effort to build ones that flew. But aside from mentioning that she minded the household, and sometimes the store, for Wilbur and Orville, and believed in them, the narrator keeps the spotlight on their achievements, remaining more a reporter than a shaper of events. Burke, too, generally keeps her in the background, or poses her just looking at her brothers or reading a letter from them. Furthermore, though a final scene of Katharine exuberantly spreading her arms on her own first flight in 1909 (over five years after Kitty Hawk—a gap Yolen finds “fascinating,” but never explains) gives his debut a rousing finish, several of his full-page, strong-figured paintings are more individual works than part of a larger whole. In the end, this wastes its unusual angle to tell essentially the same story as Wendie Old’s To Fly (2002) and Elizabeth Van Steenwyck’s One Fine Day (p. 67) and a half-dozen other similar biographies celebrating the centennial. For a better treatment of Katharine’s story, see The Wright Sister, by Richard Maurer (above). (Picture book/biography. 7-10)
Pub Date: April 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-316-97159-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2003
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
An emotional entry point to a larger, necessary discussion on this complex and difficult subject.
The paths of four migrant children from different Central American countries cross as they enter Mexico, and together they continue their journey to the United States.
Though their reasons for undertaking the perilous journey are different, their hopes are not: They all hope for asylum in the U.S. Ten-year-old Alessandra, from Guatemala, hopes to reunite with her mother, who left four years ago. Thirteen-year-old Laura and her 7-year-old brother, Nando, from El Salvador, are going to live with relatives in the U.S. And 14-year-old Rodrigo, from Honduras, will try to join his parents in Nebraska rather than join a local gang. Along the way they encounter danger, hunger, kindness from strangers, and, most importantly, the strength of friendship with one another. Through the four children, the book provides but the barest glimpse into the reasons, hopes, and dreams of the thousands of unaccompanied minors that arrive at the U.S.–Mexico border every year. Artist Guevara has added Central American folk art–influenced details to her illustrations, giving depth to the artwork. These embellishments appear as line drawings superimposed on the watercolor scenes. The backmatter explains the reasons for the book, helping to place it within the larger context of ongoing projects at Baylor University related to the migration crisis in Central America.
An emotional entry point to a larger, necessary discussion on this complex and difficult subject. (Picture book. 7-10)Pub Date: July 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64442-008-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Six Foot Press
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
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