A joyfully illustrated celebration of Brooks’ good and important work.
Poet Gwendolyn Brooks’ life is chronicled for young readers.
Growing up with a love for poetry that’s fed by her father’s recitations and her mother’s affirmations (“You are going to be the lady Paul Laurence Dunbar”), young Gwendolyn begins writing as early as 7. Poetry is everything to Gwendolyn, feeding her emotionally during the Great Depression and beyond. She writes by candlelight when the electricity is out and submits poems to publishers all over the country. Eventually they are published, but they don’t earn much—and then one day a phone call delivers joyous news: She is the first black writer to win the Pulitzer Prize! Slade’s uneven rhythms emulate Brooks’ but at times detract from a sense of textual cohesion; a superfluous explanation of the usage of “Black” in the author’s note feels awkward, as if seeking validation. On the other hand, Cabrera’s acrylic paint illustrations perfectly exemplify the title. Attention to detail, like the pink sponge roller in little Gwendolyn’s hair for a delightfully bumped bang and the dreamy bright pinks and blues of early spreads, with clocks and printed pages lining Gwendolyn’s imagination, adds a tangible depth to this story of her triumphs and challenges. Additional backmatter, including Brooks’ poem “Clouds,” a timeline, sources, and select bibliography, provides context and grounding for the airy book.
A joyfully illustrated celebration of Brooks’ good and important work. (Picture book/biography. 7-11)Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3411-3
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers can count on plenty of chuckles along with a mild challenge or two.
Rollicking verses on “numerous” topics.
Returning to the theme of her Mathematickles! (2003), illustrated by Steven Salerno, Franco gathers mostly new ruminations with references to numbers or arithmetical operations. “Do numerals get out of sorts? / Do fractions get along? / Do equal signs complain and gripe / when kids get problems wrong?” Along with universal complaints, such as why 16 dirty socks go into a washing machine but only 12 clean ones come out or why there are “three months of summer / but nine months of school!" (“It must have been grown-ups / who made up / that rule!”), the poet offers a series of numerical palindromes, a phone number guessing game, a two-voice poem for performative sorts, and, to round off the set, a cozy catalog of countable routines: “It’s knowing when night falls / and darkens my bedroom, / my pup sleeps just two feet from me. / That watching the stars flicker / in the velvety sky / is my glimpse of infinity!” Tey takes each entry and runs with it, adding comically surreal scenes of appropriately frantic or settled mood, generally featuring a diverse group of children joined by grotesques that look like refugees from Hieronymous Bosch paintings. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Readers can count on plenty of chuckles along with a mild challenge or two. (Poetry/mathematical picture book. 8-11)Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0116-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Here’s hoping this will inspire many children to joyfully engage in writing.
Both technique and imaginative impulse can be found in this useful selection of poems about the literary art.
Starting with the essentials of the English language, the letters of “Our Alphabet,” the collection moves through 21 other poems of different types, meters, and rhyme schemes. This anthology has clear classroom applications, but it will also be enjoyed by individual readers who can pore carefully over playful illustrations filled with diverse children, butterflies, flowers, books, and pieces of writing. Tackling various parts of the writing process, from “How To Begin” through “Revision Is” to “Final Edit,” the poems also touch on some reasons for writing, like “Thank You Notes” and “Writing About Reading.” Some of the poems are funny, as in the quirky, four-line “If I Were an Octopus”: “I’d grab eight pencils. / All identical. / I’d fill eight notebooks. / One per tentacle.” An amusing undersea scene dominated by a smiling, orangy octopus fills this double-page spread. Some of the poems are more focused (and less lyrical) than others, such as “Final Edit” with its ending stanzas: “I check once more to guarantee / all is flawless as can be. / Careless errors will discredit / my hard work. / That’s why I edit. / But I don’t like it. / There I said it.” At least the poet tries for a little humor in those final lines.
Here’s hoping this will inspire many children to joyfully engage in writing. (Picture book/poetry. 7-10)Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-68437-362-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Wordsong/Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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