Author/illustrator Beartrack-Algeo (Lower Brule Lakota Nation) creates a mystical world where giant bears roam and girls fly on the back of a giant eagle to become stars.
This retelling of the story of Pleiades, the Seven Sisters star formation, begins with seven Lakota sisters entering the forest to seek out the last of the season’s chokeberries. The eldest sister, Maske, loves to entertain her younger sisters with stories of Mahpiya, the Sky World: “a magical place where stars scattered as far as the eye could see.” Their mother has warned them not to go deep into the forest for berries, but the sisters eat all the berries from the nearby bushes. Maske leads her sisters farther and farther away, telling them stories all the while. They fill their baskets and turn for home, but an enormous bear appears and chases them. Terrified, they run for their lives. When they reach a ledge, they kneel, and Maske prays to the Great Spirit to save them. The ground trembles and rises high in the sky, and Wanbli Tanka, a huge sacred eagle, comes to save them. He flies the sisters to “the land of Wicahpi,” or Star Nation, from which they watch over their people. Rich oil paintings accompany the lyrical telling. An opening glossary defines Lakota terms; these definitions are repeated in parentheses within the narrative—a mildly disruptive feature.
Lovingly depicts the sacred relationship between Lakota people and their homeland. (author's notes, glossary) (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-939053-39-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: 7th Generation
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
Categories: CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION | CHILDREN'S RELIGIOUS FICTION
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Rappaport examines the salient successes and raw setbacks along the 144-year-long road between the nation’s birth and women’s suffrage.
This lively yet forthright narrative pivots on a reality that should startle modern kids: women’s right to vote was only achieved in 1920, 72 years after Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York. Indeed, time’s passage figures as a textual motif, connecting across decades such determined women as Stanton, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucy Stone. They spoke tirelessly, marched, organized, and got arrested. Rappaport includes events such as 1913’s Women’s Suffrage Parade in Washington, D.C., but doesn’t shy from divisive periods like the Civil War. Faulkner’s meticulously researched gouache-and-ink illustrations often infuse scenes with humor by playing with size and perspective. As Stanton and Lucretia Mott sail into London in 1840 for the World Anti-Slavery Conference, Faulkner depicts the two women as giants on the ship’s upper deck. On the opposite page, as they learn they’ll be barred as delegates, they’re painted in miniature, dwarfed yet unflappable beneath a gallery full of disapproving men. A final double-page spread mingles such modern stars as Shirley Chisholm and Sonia Sotomayor amid the historical leaders.
Rappaport makes this long struggle palpable and relevant, while Faulkner adds a winning mix of gravitas and high spirits. (biographical thumbnails, chronology, sources, websites, further reading, author’s note) (Picture book/biography. 6-8)Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7868-5142-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
Categories: CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION
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This tally of presidential pets reads like a school report (for all that the author is a journalist for Fox Business Network) and isn’t helped by its suite of amateurish illustrations.
Barnes frames the story with a teacher talking to her class and closes it with quizzes and a write-on “ballot.” Presidents from Washington to Obama—each paired to mentions of birds, dogs, livestock, wild animals and other White House co-residents—parade past in a rough, usually undated mix of chronological order and topical groupings. The text is laid out in monotonous blocks over thinly colored scenes that pose awkwardly rendered figures against White House floors or green lawns. In evident recognition that the presidents might be hard to tell apart, on some (but not enough) pages they carry identifying banners. The animals aren’t so differentiated; an unnamed goat that William Henry Harrison is pulling along with his cow Sukey in one picture looks a lot like one that belonged to Benjamin Harrison, and in some collective views, it’s hard to tell which animals go with which first family.
The runt of the litter of print titles and websites covering the topic. (bibliography, notes for adult readers) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-62157-035-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little Patriot Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2012
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION
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