“So, speak up, rise up, dream big,” Clinton urges—but, again, offers only tantalizing glimpses of women who did that.
A scope-broadening companion to She Persisted: 13 American Women Who Changed the World (2017).
Arranged in their subjects’ birth order (though frequently without any dates), the brief tributes focus on the achievements of selected women from countries other than the U.S. Activists’ causes include the right to an education (Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Mexico, and Malala Yousafzai, Pakistan), environmentalism (Wangari Maathai, Kenya), anti-war protests (Leymah Gbowee, Liberia) and women’s suffrage (Kate Sheppard, New Zealand, whose cause included Maori women). Marie Curie gets a nod for her two Nobel prizes, Egyptian Aisha Rateb for her trailblazing legal career, and Joanne “J.K.” Rowling for Harry Potter. Brazilian soccer star Sisleide “Sissi” Lima do Amor is the one athlete in the lineup. The roster is, overall, both racially and nationally diverse—though as Chinese-American dancer Yuan Yuan Tan has spent most of her life in this country, East Asia seems underrepresented. Personal detail is so skimpy that, for instance, readers will have to infer from context that Canadian civil rights activist Viola Desmond was a woman of color. Clinton does note that astronomer Caroline Herschel was barely 4 feet tall due to a childhood disease, and following an early accident, pioneering Indian doctor Mary Verghese worked from a wheelchair. Each entry appears with a visionary quote and, from Boiger, fluidly brushed watercolor portraits of the subject as a dignified adult and also, often, a child. There is no backmatter to guide inspired readers to further information.
“So, speak up, rise up, dream big,” Clinton urges—but, again, offers only tantalizing glimpses of women who did that. (Informational picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-51699-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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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