Examining Calder’s childhood and young adulthood, Stone focuses on his interest in craft and machinery. The child of artists, an engineering graduate and a tinkerer from the get-go, Sandy made toys, jewelry and even quick-study wire portraits for friends encountered on Parisian streets. His miniature circus, constructed of wire, cork and other found objects, grew to fill five suitcases that trundled between New York and Paris for engrossing, kinetic performances. The lively text shines with apt details. Quotes peppering the narrative, though unattributed specifically, seem carefully interpolated. “People said: ‘He has discovered, in playing, a new world.’ His art ‘has the force of the ocean.’ ” Kulikov’s mixed-media illustrations anchor black-and-white sketches (portraying Calder’s processes, tools and sources of inspiration) within full-color spreads that playfully celebrate the text. Sandy, shouldering a thick lariat of wire, bicycles through a 1920s Paris teeming with canvas-schlepping artists. His elegant, ever-present laurel-wreathed muse hovers nearby, with a palette (or, in one spread, lugging some of those suitcases). Spritely, noteworthy and nicely timed to Calder’s 110th birthday. (author’s note, source note) (Picture book/biography. 6-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-670-06268-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2008
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
This second early biography of Cousteau in a year echoes Jennifer Berne’s Manfish: A Story of Jacques Cousteau (2008), illustrated by Eric Puybaret, in offering visuals that are more fanciful than informational, but also complements it with a focus less on the early life of the explorer and eco-activist than on his later inventions and achievements. In full-bleed scenes that are often segmented and kaleidoscopic, Yaccarino sets his hook-nosed subject amid shoals of Impressionistic fish and other marine images, rendered in multiple layers of thinly applied, imaginatively colored paint. His customarily sharp, geometric lines take on the wavy translucence of undersea shapes with a little bit of help from the airbrush. Along with tracing Cousteau’s undersea career from his first, life-changing, pair of goggles and the later aqualung to his minisub Sea Flea, the author pays tribute to his revolutionary film and TV work, and his later efforts to call attention to the effects of pollution. Cousteau’s enduring fascination with the sea comes through clearly, and can’t help sparking similar feelings in readers. (chronology, source list) (Picture book/biography. 6-8)
Pub Date: March 24, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-375-85573-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2009
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