This vivid portrait is sure to encourage young readers and listeners to pursue their dreams.
“…all that matters is the runner and the track.”
Spotted racing for a train, Betty Robinson was invited to join the boys high school track team, and after only three competitions, the 16-year-old white girl won the first women’s gold medal in track and field during the first Olympic Games that allowed women to run, in 1928. Action-filled illustrations give a sense of the period and focus on her runner’s stance and determined facial expressions while straightforward text points out her resolve, her experiences, and the challenges she faced as a female athlete. Betty Robinson continued to set records while training for the 1932 Olympics—until her biplane crashed and she was told she would never walk again. Wracked with pain, she began a grueling regimen that enabled her to compete in the 1936 Olympic relay and win with her team. Betty’s resilience is presented in a simple, believable way, not mentioning that recovery from such an injury may be impossible. Focusing strictly on the runner and her struggles and accomplishments—the fact that black women did not compete is not addressed while Jesse Owen’s 1936 win in Berlin is mentioned only in the endnotes—this powerful volume provides a specific but inspiring tale of athletics, feminism, resilience, and teamwork.
This vivid portrait is sure to encourage young readers and listeners to pursue their dreams. (Picture book/biography. 6-9)Pub Date: June 9, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-289607-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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
Blandly laudatory.
The iconic animator introduces young readers to each “happy place” in his life.
The tally begins with his childhood home in Marceline, Missouri, and climaxes with Disneyland (carefully designed to be “the happiest place on Earth”), but the account really centers on finding his true happy place, not on a map but in drawing. In sketching out his early flubs and later rocket to the top, the fictive narrator gives Ub Iwerks and other Disney studio workers a nod (leaving his labor disputes with them unmentioned) and squeezes in quick references to his animated films, from Steamboat Willie to Winnie the Pooh (sans Fantasia and Song of the South). Eliopoulos incorporates stills from the films into his cartoon illustrations and, characteristically for this series, depicts Disney as a caricature, trademark mustache in place on outsized head even in childhood years and child sized even as an adult. Human figures default to white, with occasional people of color in crowd scenes and (ahistorically) in the animation studio. One unidentified animator builds up the role-modeling with an observation that Walt and Mickey were really the same (“Both fearless; both resourceful”). An assertion toward the end—“So when do you stop being a child? When you stop dreaming”—muddles the overall follow-your-bliss message. A timeline to the EPCOT Center’s 1982 opening offers photos of the man with select associates, rodent and otherwise. An additional series entry, I Am Marie Curie, publishes simultaneously, featuring a gowned, toddler-sized version of the groundbreaking physicist accepting her two Nobel prizes.
Blandly laudatory. (bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2875-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
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