The tiny (less than five feet tall) sharpshooter known as Annie Oakley began life as Phoebe Ann Mozee on an Ohio farm. At age eight, Annie, one of seven children, broke her nose from the kickback of the rifle she used to kill a cottontail rabbit to feed her family. After her father and one of her sisters died, Annie boarded with a couple to help care for their baby, but for two years they kept her a virtual prisoner and didn’t even let her write to her mother. She escaped, began supporting her family by supplying game to fancy hotels through a local grocery store, and at age 20 won the clay-pigeon shooting match against Frank Butler celebrated in song and story. Krensky follows Annie’s career through her marriage to Butler, her work in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, and her tours throughout the US and Europe. The quotes are apparently taken from Annie’s own diaries (credited in the acknowledgments) and have a richly authentic flavor. The deep-toned, soft-focus paintings make good use of gold and sepia; one of Annie’s most famous tricks, involving shooting glass balls, is brilliantly evoked in shadows, a puff of rifle smoke, and exploding glass shards. A terrific introduction to a historical character who was the heroine of her own fabulous tale. (author’s note) (Picture book/biography. 7-10)
Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2001
ISBN: 0-374-36843-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Melanie Kroupa/Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2001
A picture book worth reading about a historical figure worth remembering.
An honestly told biography of an important politician whose name every American should know.
Published while the United States has its first African-American president, this story of John Roy Lynch, the first African-American speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives, lays bare the long and arduous path black Americans have walked to obtain equality. The title’s first three words—“The Amazing Age”—emphasize how many more freedoms African-Americans had during Reconstruction than for decades afterward. Barton and Tate do not shy away from honest depictions of slavery, floggings, the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow laws, or the various means of intimidation that whites employed to prevent blacks from voting and living lives equal to those of whites. Like President Barack Obama, Lynch was of biracial descent; born to an enslaved mother and an Irish father, he did not know hard labor until his slave mistress asked him a question that he answered honestly. Freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, Lynch had a long and varied career that points to his resilience and perseverance. Tate’s bright watercolor illustrations often belie the harshness of what takes place within them; though this sometimes creates a visual conflict, it may also make the book more palatable for young readers unaware of the violence African-Americans have suffered than fully graphic images would. A historical note, timeline, author’s and illustrator’s notes, bibliography and map are appended.
A picture book worth reading about a historical figure worth remembering. (Picture book biography. 7-10)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8028-5379-0
Page Count: 50
Publisher: Eerdmans
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
Spinning lively invented details around skimpy historical records, Taylor profiles the 19th-century chef credited with inventing the potato chip. Crum, thought to be of mixed Native-American and African-American ancestry, was a lover of the outdoors, who turned cooking skills learned from a French hunter into a kitchen job at an upscale resort in New York state. As the story goes, he fried up the first batch of chips in a fit of pique after a diner complained that his French fries were cut too thickly. Morrison’s schoolroom, kitchen and restaurant scenes seem a little more integrated than would have been likely in the 1850s, but his sinuous figures slide through them with exaggerated elegance, adding a theatrical energy as delicious as the snack food they celebrate. The author leaves Crum presiding over a restaurant (also integrated) of his own, closes with a note separating fact from fiction and also lists her sources. (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-58430-255-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lee & Low Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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