A passionate ode to a suffragist and abolitionist who should surely be a household name.
In 1830s Massachusetts, girls’ and women’s voices were considered inconsequential.
Lucy Stone excelled in school, but when her father decided that she’d had enough education for a girl, she paid her own way through Ohio’s Oberlin Collegiate Institute, known for its integrated and co-ed student body. But even at progressive Oberlin, young women weren’t treated fairly. When Lucy found out that she was earning half the work study wages that the male students made, she wrote a letter to the administration and refused to work. The school changed its policy, inspiring a determined Lucy to keep speaking up. After graduation, Lucy was hired by the New England Anti-Slavery Society; she toured and spoke at rallies, sometimes facing angry protestors. Lucy’s unwavering voice contributed to many important changes, including the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment and a law granting property rights to married women. Gibbon’s acrylic and colored pencil illustrations are kinetic and angular, depicting a spirited Lucy and her peers in energetic pops of color. Lucy’s direct quotations are peppered throughout the illustrations, potentially engaging older readers, though some advanced language may deter the younger, intended audience. All quotes are written in scrawled, difficult-to-decipher cursive hand-lettering. Overall, though, readers should come away inspired by her bold action—and stirred to make change themselves.
A passionate ode to a suffragist and abolitionist who should surely be a household name. (author’s note, photos, timeline, fun facts, bibliography, picture credits) (Picture-book biography. 6-8)Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781662680458
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Calkins Creek/Astra Books for Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
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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