Inspirational and informative, this tale of two cultures might spark a love of tap in young readers.
A look at the history of a well-known dance.
In the mid-1800s, Charles Dickens marveled at the fancy footwork of a formerly enslaved man who tapped on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. At the same time enslaved people were fleeing the South for New York City, Irish immigrants flocked to Manhattan to escape the potato famine. New York welcomed neither population, and their shared oppression and mutual love of dance brought them together. Irish Americans danced the jig with a stiff upper body; African Americans moved their whole bodies while tapping, even using some body parts as percussion instruments. As African American and Irish American dancers mixed and mingled in New York’s bustling Five Points neighborhood, William Henry Lane, a Black dancer nicknamed Master Juba, infused aspects of the Irish jig into his performance. Irish American Jack Diamond proposed a dance-off, and after Lane won, they performed together often. The book’s smaller font tells the nonfiction story, while the capitalized Broadway-like font offers a poetic, enticing commentary on tap. Lively images of George M. Cohan, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Clayton “Peg Leg” Bates, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Gregory Hines, and Savion Glover appear in the book, but oddly missing is Sammy Davis Jr., perhaps the most iconic Black TV tapper of the 20th century.
Inspirational and informative, this tale of two cultures might spark a love of tap in young readers. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 7-10)Pub Date: May 15, 2023
ISBN: 9781478875918
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Reycraft Books
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A pivotal moment in a child’s life, at once stirring and authentically personal.
Before growing up to become a major figure in the civil rights movement, a boy finds a role model.
Buffing up a childhood tale told by her renowned father, Young Shelton describes how young Andrew saw scary men marching in his New Orleans neighborhood (“It sounded like they were yelling ‘Hi, Hitler!’ ”). In response to his questions, his father took him to see a newsreel of Jesse Owens (“a runner who looked like me”) triumphing in the 1936 Olympics. “Racism is a sickness,” his father tells him. “We’ve got to help folks like that.” How? “Well, you can start by just being the best person you can be,” his father replies. “It’s what you do that counts.” In James’ hazy chalk pastels, Andrew joins racially diverse playmates (including a White child with an Irish accent proudly displaying the nickel he got from his aunt as a bribe to stop playing with “those Colored boys”) in tag and other games, playing catch with his dad, sitting in the midst of a cheering crowd in the local theater’s segregated balcony, and finally visualizing himself pelting down a track alongside his new hero—“head up, back straight, eyes focused,” as a thematically repeated line has it, on the finish line. An afterword by Young Shelton explains that she retold this story, told to her many times growing up, drawing from conversations with Young and from her own research; family photos are also included. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A pivotal moment in a child’s life, at once stirring and authentically personal. (illustrator’s note) (Autobiographical picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-545-55465-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
Shot through with vague generalities and paired to a mix of equally generic period images and static new art, this overview remorselessly sucks all the juice from its topic.
This survey of the growth of industries in this country from the Colonial period to the post–World War II era is written in the driest of textbook-ese: “Factories needed good transportation so that materials could reach them and so that materials could reach buyers”; “The metal iron is obtained by heating iron ore”; “In 1860, the North said that free men, not slaves, should do the work.” This text is supplemented by a jumble of narrative-overview blocks, boxed side observations and terse captions on each thematic spread. The design is packed with overlapping, misleadingly seamless and rarely differentiated mixes of small, heavily trimmed contemporary prints or (later) photos and drab reconstructions of workshop or factory scenes, along with pictures of significant inventions and technological innovations (which are, in several cases, reduced to background design elements). The single, tiny map has no identifying labels. Other new entries in the All About America series deal similarly with Explorers, Trappers, and Pioneers, A Nation of Immigrants and Stagecoaches and Railroads. Utilitarian, at best—but more likely to dim reader interest than kindle it. (index, timeline, resource lists) (Nonfiction. 8-10)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7534-6670-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kingfisher
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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