Solid if incomplete.
The story of a wounded child who found refuge in sports.
As a child growing up in Indian Territory, Jim Thorpe (Sac and Fox) was taken from his family to Haskell Institute, a boarding school where Native children were forced into a white assimilation education system. After running away from Haskell several times, Jim was sent at 16 to the Carlisle Industrial School, where his father hoped he would learn a trade. Coulson’s straightforward account informs readers that it was at Carlisle where Jim turned his talent for running to track, encouraged by coach Glenn “Pop” Warner. Though Jim was small for his age, he excelled in baseball, lacrosse, and hockey—and his ability to dodge bigger players landed him on Carlisle’s varsity football team. The twin highlights of his career were making it to the 1912 Olympics, where he won several gold medals, and leading Carlisle to defeat the champion Army team. Hardcastle’s fine-lined ink-and-watercolor illustrations project an appropriately bygone air, depicting Thorpe in motion more often than not. Though the book is a welcome celebration of this Native American sports hero, the text skates over the impacts of forced cultural assimilation and separation from his family on Jim. Coulson (Cherokee) does mention a more personal family history in the backmatter, as well as the stripping of Thorpe’s Olympic medals (and their posthumous restoration), but his failure to integrate it into the story keeps readers from appreciating Jim’s victories in their full scope.
Solid if incomplete. (glossary, further reading, notes) (Informational picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5435-0406-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Capstone Young Readers
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
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
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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