by Deborah Kogan Ray & illustrated by Deborah Kogan Ray ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 20, 2007
Drawing on, and quoting short passages from, original sources, Ray retraces the early life of renowned naturalist John Wesley Powell—highlighting his 1869 venture through the Grand Canyon and the follow-up expedition of 1871. She only actually shows his disability (incurred early in a heroic Civil War career) in the final picture, but repeated mentions make it a recurring theme of the spare, well-organized narrative; being one-handed doesn’t seem to have slowed him down at all, though once a rope-less colleague had to help him up a cliff by lowering a pair of trousers. With a palette of warm reds and browns, Ray creates slightly soft-focus illustrations that follow Powell from youth to maturity, and capture the scale and rugged beauty of the western landscape. Rounded off with a look at Powell’s distinguished later career, as well as a back matter that includes an author’s note, chronology and a substantial reading list, this follows Ray’s Flower Hunter: William Bartram, America’s First Naturalist (2004) in raising the profile of one of our country’s important but lesser-known explorers. (Picture book/biography. 8-10)
Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-374-31838-3
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Frances Foster/Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2007
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by Ann Whitford Paul ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1999
Prose poems celebrate the feats of young heroines, some of them famous, and some not as well-known. Paul (Hello Toes! Hello Feet!, 1998, etc.) recounts moments in the lives of women such as Rachel Carson, Amelia Earhart, and Wilma Rudolph; these moments don’t necessarily reflect what made them famous as much as they are pivotal events in their youth that influenced the direction of their lives. For Earhart, it was sliding down the roof of the tool shed in a home-made roller coaster: “It’s like flying!” For Rudolph, it was the struggle to learn to walk without her foot brace. Other women, such as Violet Sheehy, who rescued her family from a fire in Hinckley, Minnesota, or Harriet Hanson, a union supporter in the fabric mills of Massachusetts, are celebrated for their brave decisions made under extreme duress. Steirnagle’s sweeping paintings powerfully exude the strength of character exhibited by these young women. A commemorative book, that honors both quiet and noisy acts of heroism. (Picture book/poetry. 6-9)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-15-201477-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
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by Ann Whitford Paul ; illustrated by David Walker
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by Ann Whitford Paul ; illustrated by Jay Fleck
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by Faith Ringgold ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1999
Ringgold’s biography of Rosa Parks packs substantial material into a few pages, but with a light touch, and with the ring of authenticity that gives her act of weary resistance all the respect it deserves. Narrating the book is the bus that Parks took that morning 45 years ago; it recounts the signal events in Parks’s life to a young girl who boarded it to go to school. A decent amount of the material will probably be new to children, for Parks is so intimately associated with the Montgomery Bus Boycott that her work with the NAACP before the bus incident is often overlooked, as is her later role as a community activist in Detroit with Congressman John Conyers. Ringgold, through the bus, also informs readers of Parks’s youth in rural Alabama, where Klansmen and nightriders struck fear into the lives of African-Americans. These experiences make her refusal to release her seat all the more courageous, for the consequences of resistance were not gentle. All the events are depicted in emotive naive artwork that underscores their truth; Ringgold delivers Parks’s story without hyperbole, but rather as a life lived with pride, conviction, and consequence. (Picture book/biography. 5-9)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-689-81892-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
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