A story for book-loving children and adults who believe in the power of literature.
In 1945 Germany, when children were going hungry, Jella Lepman, a Jewish woman, returned to her country and created a traveling exhibit of international children’s books.
From that work emerged both the International Youth Library and the International Board on Books for Young People. This fictional story provides an accessible introduction to a person devoted to children’s intellectual and emotional development. As Anneliese notices women working to clear Munich’s bombed-out streets, her little brother Peter picks flowers growing out of the concrete, a gesture echoed in other spreads when symbolic red flowers appear floating out of books that the children will soon view. Although food is always on their minds, they enter a big building and find an exhibit of international children’s books. Anneliese remembers her papa reading Pu de Bär (Winnie-the-Pooh) to her, and Peter is excited to find a book about an elephant in a suit. On another visit they listen to “the lady with the books” translate The Story of Ferdinand into German; the anti-war theme resonates with Anneliese. The soft-edged illustrations are quite lovely, perhaps downplaying postwar-period hardships but also displaying Lepman’s optimism. Principal and most secondary characters are White; two children of color are also seen visiting the exhibit. Lepman’s work and legacy are explored in four pages of backmatter. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10.4-by-18.8-inch double-page spreads viewed at 73.6% of actual size.)
A story for book-loving children and adults who believe in the power of literature. (Picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5253-0154-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Rappaport makes this long struggle palpable and relevant, while Faulkner adds a winning mix of gravitas and high spirits.
Rappaport examines the salient successes and raw setbacks along the 144-year-long road between the nation’s birth and women’s suffrage.
This lively yet forthright narrative pivots on a reality that should startle modern kids: women’s right to vote was only achieved in 1920, 72 years after Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York. Indeed, time’s passage figures as a textual motif, connecting across decades such determined women as Stanton, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucy Stone. They spoke tirelessly, marched, organized, and got arrested. Rappaport includes events such as 1913’s Women’s Suffrage Parade in Washington, D.C., but doesn’t shy from divisive periods like the Civil War. Faulkner’s meticulously researched gouache-and-ink illustrations often infuse scenes with humor by playing with size and perspective. As Stanton and Lucretia Mott sail into London in 1840 for the World Anti-Slavery Conference, Faulkner depicts the two women as giants on the ship’s upper deck. On the opposite page, as they learn they’ll be barred as delegates, they’re painted in miniature, dwarfed yet unflappable beneath a gallery full of disapproving men. A final double-page spread mingles such modern stars as Shirley Chisholm and Sonia Sotomayor amid the historical leaders.
Rappaport makes this long struggle palpable and relevant, while Faulkner adds a winning mix of gravitas and high spirits. (biographical thumbnails, chronology, sources, websites, further reading, author’s note) (Picture book/biography. 6-8)Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7868-5142-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
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