St. George follows You’re on Your Way, Teddy Roosevelt (p. 813) with another perceptive look at the formative years of another president-to-be. Here, she focuses on three major influences in young George’s life: his admiration for his father Augustus; then after Gus’s death, for older half-brother Lawrence; and finally, the character-building survey expedition that he joined into the Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah Valley at age 16. Though she mentions the Washington family’s slaves, a domineering stepmother, and the early deaths of several siblings, in general St. George presents a rosy picture of the young squire’s early life. Powers catches that tone, depicting Washington as a tall, smiling lad in fine but often rumpled colonial garb, with an oversize head, leonine mane of golden brown hair and piercing blue eyes. The author closes with a capsule history of Washington’s later achievements, plus a bibliography aimed, inexplicably, at adults—but younger readers looking for insight into the Great Man’s character, temperament, attitudes, and upbringing will find plenty to ponder in this engaging, focused study. (Picture book/biography. 7-9)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-399-23887-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2004
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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