The team that created Tree of Hope (1999) returns to present a story of the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project. Jolie is frightened by the presence of Annie, the white Freedom Rider her mother has volunteered to host over the summer, and she is reluctant to attend the Freedom School Annie will teach. But when a brick crashes through her window, and the church that is to hold the school burns down, Jolie realizes that daring to learn about her heritage in the face of hate is the best way to fight back. Littlesugar’s prose effectively captures the pervasive fear felt by the African-American community and evokes the almost electric excitement of learning about a proud history for the first time. “Annie spoke of a free black man from long ago. ‘Benjamin Banneker was his name,’ she said. ‘He was a mathematician, a farmer, but more than anything else, he loved the stars.’ ” Cooper’s muted, oil-wash illustrations are equally expressive when presenting a close-up of a stern Uncle Shad, admonishing Jolie not to let “bein’ scared” get in her way, as when depicting a long view of Annie teaching under an old hickory tree, the children at her feet and 70-year-old Miss Rosetta in her chair. Some illustrations are not so successful (as when Annie appears to be almost shouting a lesson about Harriet Tubman at Jolie), but this slight unevenness does not mar the effect of the whole. A loving, touching, and inspiring presentation of an often-overlooked chapter of the civil-rights saga. Includes author’s note and bibliography. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-23006-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2000
Innocuous adventuring on the smallest of scales.
The Mouse and the Motorcycle (1965) upgrades to The Mice and the Rolls-Royce.
In Windsor Castle there sits a “dollhouse like no other,” replete with working plumbing, electricity, and even a full library of real, tiny books. Called Queen Mary’s Dollhouse, it also plays host to the Whiskers family, a clan of mice that has maintained the house for generations. Henry Whiskers and his cousin Jeremy get up to the usual high jinks young mice get up to, but when Henry’s little sister Isabel goes missing at the same time that the humans decide to clean the house up, the usually bookish big brother goes on the adventure of his life. Now Henry is driving cars, avoiding cats, escaping rats, and all before the upcoming mouse Masquerade. Like an extended version of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Two Bad Mice (1904), Priebe keeps this short chapter book constantly moving, with Duncan’s peppy art a cute capper. Oddly, the dollhouse itself plays only the smallest of roles in this story, and no factual information on the real Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House is included at the tale’s end (an opportunity lost).
Innocuous adventuring on the smallest of scales. (Fantasy. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-6575-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
Celebrated collaborators deliver another thoughtful delight, revealing how “making marks” links us across time and space.
The light-skinned, redheaded narrator journeys alone as flight attendants supply snacks to diverse, interspecies passengers. The kid muses, “Sometimes they ask me, ‘Why are you always going to the farthest planet?’ ”The response comes after the traveler hurtles through the solar system, lands, and levitates up to the platform where a welcoming grandmother waits: “Because it’s worth it / to cross one universe / to explore another.” Indeed, child and grandmother enter an egg-shaped, clear-domed orb and fly over a teeming savanna and a towering waterfall before disembarking, donning headlamps, and entering a cave. Inside, the pair marvel at a human handprint and ancient paintings of animals including horses, bison, and horned rhinoceroses. Yockteng’s skilled, vigorously shaded pictures suggest references to images found in Lascaux and Chauvet Cave in France. As the holiday winds down, grandmother gives the protagonist some colored pencils that had belonged to grandfather generations back. (She appears to chuckle over a nude portrait of her younger self.) The pencils “were good for making marks on paper. She gave me that too.” The child draws during the return trip, documenting the visit and sights along the journey home. “Because what I could see was infinity.” (This book was reviewed digitally with 9.8-by-19.6-inch double-page spreads viewed at 85% of actual size.)
Celebrated collaborators deliver another thoughtful delight, revealing how “making marks” links us across time and space. (Picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77306-172-6
Page Count: 52
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
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