A bright salutation of a story, with one determined woman at its center.
Pimentel tenders the story of Bobbi Gibb, the first woman to (surreptitiously) run the classic Boston Marathon, with illustrations that pay close attention to the route along the way.
Hot on the heels of Kristina Yee and Frances Poletti’s The Girl Who Ran, illustrated by Susanna Chapman (2017), is another rendering of Gibb’s saga. This time the story pivots less around Gibb’s trick to evade the officials than the sheer joy of running—it is as though Gibb is on one long runner’s high, and it’s good fun to run along with her. Readers learn that Gibb trained in nurse’s shoes, making “her feet feel weightless” when she bought proper running shoes (boys’ size six, as there are none for “girls”). Once she was in the race and doffed her sweatshirt to avoid heat exhaustion, she was cheered on by all but the most curmudgeonly marathon watchers. Archer provides the landscape through which the blonde white woman trains and then the marathon path itself. Her artwork is an eyeful, a deep-dish mixture of oil paint and collage with tissue paper and hand-stamped patterned papers as materials. In addition, she adds mile markers and elevation notes to convey the runners’ toils and why it is called “Heartbreak Hill.” The tiny smattering of African-Americans engaged in the race and in the crowds is sad but true.
A bright salutation of a story, with one determined woman at its center. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-101-99668-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
Pretty but substance-free—which is probably not how any of this book’s subjects would like to be remembered.
Inspired by Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s stand against the appointment of Sen. Jeff Sessions as U.S. attorney general—and titled for Sen. Mitch McConnell’s stifling of same—glancing introductions to 13 American women who “persisted.”
Among the figures relatively familiar to the audience are Harriet Tubman, Helen Keller, and Ruby Bridges; among the more obscure are union organizer Clara Lemlich, physician Virginia Apgar, and Olympian Florence Griffith Joyner. Sonia Sotomayor and Oprah Winfrey are two readers may already have some consciousness of. The women have clearly been carefully selected to represent American diversity, although there are significant gaps—there are no Asian-American women, for instance—and the extreme brevity of the coverage leads to reductivism and erasure: Osage dancer Maria Tallchief is identified only as “Native American,” and lesbian Sally Ride’s sexual orientation is elided completely. Clinton’s prose is almost bloodless, running to such uninspiring lines as, about Margaret Chase Smith, “she persisted in championing women’s rights and more opportunities for women in the military, standing up for free speech and supporting space exploration.” Boiger does her best to compensate, creating airy watercolors full of movement for each double-page spread. Quotations are incorporated into illustrations—although the absence of dates and context leaves them unmoored. That’s the overall feeling readers will get, as the uniformity of presentation and near-total lack of detail makes this overview so broad as to be ineffectual. The failure to provide any sources for further information should the book manage to pique readers’ interests simply exacerbates the problem.
Pretty but substance-free—which is probably not how any of this book’s subjects would like to be remembered. (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 30, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4172-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
This heartwarming story of a boy and his beloved dog opens the door for further study of our 16th president.
A slice of Abraham Lincoln’s childhood life is explored through a fictionalized anecdote about his dog Honey.
When 7-year-old Abe rescues a golden-brown dog with a broken leg, he takes the pup home to the Lincolns’ cabin in Knob Creek, Kentucky. Honey follows Abe everywhere, including trailing after his owner into a deep cave. When Abe gets stuck between rocks, Honey goes for help and leads a search party back to the trapped boy for a dramatic rescue. The source for this story was a book incorporating the memories of Abe’s boyhood friend, explained in an author’s note. The well-paced text includes invented dialogue attributed to Abe and his parents. Abe’s older sister, Sarah, is not mentioned in the text and is shown in the illustrations as a little girl younger than Abe. All the characters present white save for one black man in the rescue crew. An oversized format and multiple double-page spreads provide plenty of space for cartoon-style illustrations of the Lincoln cabin, the surrounding countryside, and the spooky cave where Abe was trapped. This story focuses on the incident in the cave and Abe’s rescue; a more complete look at Lincoln’s life is included in an appended timeline and the author’s note, both of which include references to Lincoln’s kindness to animals and to other pets he owned.
This heartwarming story of a boy and his beloved dog opens the door for further study of our 16th president. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-269900-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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