Tendentious role modeling commingled with an exciting tale of dino discovery.
The story of the discovery of the most complete T. Rex fossil to date and the shy autodidact after whom it is named.
Readers will definitely come away knowing at least two things about Sue Hendrickson (or three, counting the long blonde mane that makes her instantly locatable in Sudyka’s outdoorsy scenes): first, that as a child she was shy—Buzzeo uses the word seven times in her short narrative—and second, that she was born to, as the author repeatedly puts it, “find things.” As tantalizing references in both the main account and the afterword note, that curiosity has turned up a number of lost and hidden treasures, from amber to shipwrecks, but it is for Sue that she is best known. That discovery begins with four summers spent “digging for duckbills” in South Dakota, climaxed by the dramatic moment she spots “three enormous backbones” protruding from a cliff. The narrative continues through the painstaking process of removing the fossils bone by bone, then seeing the dinosaur at last reconstructed (after a long brangle over ownership) at Chicago’s Field Museum. The prehistoric Sue poses regally at the close in both a painted portrait and a tailpiece photograph; though often seen alone, in group scenes, the white, human one works with a racially diverse set of colleagues.
Tendentious role modeling commingled with an exciting tale of dino discovery. (source lists) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3163-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses.
An NBA star pays tribute to the influence of his grandfather.
In the same vein as his Long Shot (2009), illustrated by Frank Morrison, this latest from Paul prioritizes values and character: “My granddad Papa Chilly had dreams that came true,” he writes, “so maybe if I listen and watch him, / mine will too.” So it is that the wide-eyed Black child in the simply drawn illustrations rises early to get to the playground hoops before anyone else, watches his elder working hard and respecting others, hears him cheering along with the rest of the family from the stands during games, and recalls in a prose afterword that his grandfather wasn’t one to lecture but taught by example. Paul mentions in both the text and the backmatter that Papa Chilly was the first African American to own a service station in North Carolina (his presumed dream) but not that he was killed in a robbery, which has the effect of keeping the overall tone positive and the instructional content one-dimensional. Figures in the pictures are mostly dark-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-250-81003-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
Blandly laudatory.
The iconic animator introduces young readers to each “happy place” in his life.
The tally begins with his childhood home in Marceline, Missouri, and climaxes with Disneyland (carefully designed to be “the happiest place on Earth”), but the account really centers on finding his true happy place, not on a map but in drawing. In sketching out his early flubs and later rocket to the top, the fictive narrator gives Ub Iwerks and other Disney studio workers a nod (leaving his labor disputes with them unmentioned) and squeezes in quick references to his animated films, from Steamboat Willie to Winnie the Pooh (sans Fantasia and Song of the South). Eliopoulos incorporates stills from the films into his cartoon illustrations and, characteristically for this series, depicts Disney as a caricature, trademark mustache in place on outsized head even in childhood years and child sized even as an adult. Human figures default to white, with occasional people of color in crowd scenes and (ahistorically) in the animation studio. One unidentified animator builds up the role-modeling with an observation that Walt and Mickey were really the same (“Both fearless; both resourceful”). An assertion toward the end—“So when do you stop being a child? When you stop dreaming”—muddles the overall follow-your-bliss message. A timeline to the EPCOT Center’s 1982 opening offers photos of the man with select associates, rodent and otherwise. An additional series entry, I Am Marie Curie, publishes simultaneously, featuring a gowned, toddler-sized version of the groundbreaking physicist accepting her two Nobel prizes.
Blandly laudatory. (bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2875-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
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