A gloriously illustrated volume appropriately emphasizes process in its examination of Degas’s ballet paintings. “[Degas] learned that ballet training was very much like studying art. It took hard work and hours and hours of practice. Degas drew the same poses again and again, just as the dancers repeated their positions and steps again and again.” From this opening, Rubin (The Yellow House, 2001, etc.) proceeds to describe Degas’s fascination with the discipline of the ballet and his determination to capture both the beauty and the work of the dance. The simple text draws on primary-source material, including Degas’s own writings and those of his contemporaries and subjects, itself painting a portrait of an extraordinarily dedicated artist whose perfectionism led him to reclaim a gift made to a friend in order to tweak it. After ruining it and providing a different painting in apology, the friend reportedly chained the replacement to his wall. Such humanizing anecdotes accompany a host of thoroughly and thoughtfully captioned reproductions of his work; studies frequently appear next to the finished paintings to demonstrate his process. Degas’s experiments with media are succinctly described and illustrated, as is the effect of his increasing blindness on his art. One small flaw is the narrative’s assignment of Degas to the Impressionist school; many art historians place him, with his supremely humane depictions of weary dancers, in the school of Realism. The narrative’s focus is exclusively on Degas’s work with the dance; a biographical note (in forbiddingly dense type) follows, sketching out in more detail his full career. An author’s note and bibliography (in equally forbidding tiny type) round out this altogether lovely offering. (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-10)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-8109-0567-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2002
A picture book worth reading about a historical figure worth remembering.
An honestly told biography of an important politician whose name every American should know.
Published while the United States has its first African-American president, this story of John Roy Lynch, the first African-American speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives, lays bare the long and arduous path black Americans have walked to obtain equality. The title’s first three words—“The Amazing Age”—emphasize how many more freedoms African-Americans had during Reconstruction than for decades afterward. Barton and Tate do not shy away from honest depictions of slavery, floggings, the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow laws, or the various means of intimidation that whites employed to prevent blacks from voting and living lives equal to those of whites. Like President Barack Obama, Lynch was of biracial descent; born to an enslaved mother and an Irish father, he did not know hard labor until his slave mistress asked him a question that he answered honestly. Freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, Lynch had a long and varied career that points to his resilience and perseverance. Tate’s bright watercolor illustrations often belie the harshness of what takes place within them; though this sometimes creates a visual conflict, it may also make the book more palatable for young readers unaware of the violence African-Americans have suffered than fully graphic images would. A historical note, timeline, author’s and illustrator’s notes, bibliography and map are appended.
A picture book worth reading about a historical figure worth remembering. (Picture book biography. 7-10)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8028-5379-0
Page Count: 50
Publisher: Eerdmans
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
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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