A deserving tribute to a designer who wanted only the best.
With flowers and fancy fabrics, Black fashion designer Ann Lowe created gowns for the rich and famous, breaking color barriers in dress design.
Messner and Powell chronicle Lowe’s story; from her Alabama childhood in a dressmaking family to a salon on New York City’s Madison Avenue, it’s a life of breaking racial barriers, where ugly incidents contrast with the soft fabrics, delicate lace, and sparkles. In New York in 1917, she took sewing lessons at the S.T. Taylor School but was forced to sew in a separate room, away from the White students. For years, her employers didn’t credit her work. Lowe is most famous for her dresses for Jacqueline Kennedy’s wedding, but even this climactic achievement is balanced with an account of confronting racism in her life—when Lowe arrived to deliver the dresses, she was told to use the back door but refused, threatening to take the gowns with her if she wasn’t allowed in through the front entrance. Fittingly, the final spread shows a triumphant Lowe with her own shop, where her name will appear on the labels as well as the door. Robinson’s digital art, full of textures, curves, and color, is perfectly suited to the subject, while Messner and Powell’s evocative, often alliterative text begs to be read aloud. (Powell had written her thesis on the designer and was in the process of organizing a museum exhibit of her gowns when she died.) (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A deserving tribute to a designer who wanted only the best. (author’s note, quotations, bibliography) (Informational picture book. 5-10)Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4521-6160-0
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2022
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
An inspiring introduction to the young Nobel Peace Prize winner and a useful conversation starter.
The latest of many picture books about the young heroine from Pakistan, this one is narrated by Malala herself, with a frame that is accessible to young readers.
Malala introduces her story using a television show she used to watch about a boy with a magic pencil that he used to get himself and his friends out of trouble. Readers can easily follow Malala through her own discovery of troubles in her beloved home village, such as other children not attending school and soldiers taking over the village. Watercolor-and-ink illustrations give a strong sense of setting, while gold ink designs overlay Malala’s hopes onto her often dreary reality. The story makes clear Malala’s motivations for taking up the pen to tell the world about the hardships in her village and only alludes to the attempt on her life, with a black page (“the dangerous men tried to silence me. / But they failed”) and a hospital bracelet on her wrist the only hints of the harm that came to her. Crowds with signs join her call before she is shown giving her famous speech before the United Nations. Toward the end of the book, adult readers may need to help children understand Malala’s “work,” but the message of holding fast to courage and working together is powerful and clear.
An inspiring introduction to the young Nobel Peace Prize winner and a useful conversation starter. (Picture book/memoir. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-31957-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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