The story of an intrepid rosarian who cultivated not only a new variety of rose, but also a glimmer of hope when the world needed it most.
Born in 1912, Francis Meilland grew up on his family’s farm in southern France, where they grew fruits, vegetables, and roses. After becoming fascinated with cross-pollination, he began experimenting to create a new rose of his very own. He tried for many years and finally grew “an enormous rose—five inches across in full bloom—with petals that shaded from pale ivory at the center through creamy yellow to a fringe of deep pink at their outer edges.” Tragically, the world was thrust into World War II soon after. Meilland rushed to send clippings of the new rose to growers. The rose thrived and was given many different names around the globe, none more apt than Peace, the name given to the flower by U.S. grower Robert Pyle. Exquisite watercolors by Ibatoulline starkly contrast sun-drenched rose gardens with smudged, fragile battlefields, highlighting the many strands woven into the flower’s journey. The narrative adeptly adds botanical information (with more facts appended in an afterword), making for a compelling combination of history and science. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Poignant storytelling that absolutely blooms. (glossary, bibliography) (Informational picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: April 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0843-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
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BOOK REVIEW
Shamir offers an investigation of the foundations of freedoms in the United States via its founding documents, as well as movements and individuals who had great impacts on shaping and reshaping those institutions.
The opening pages of this picture book get off to a wobbly start with comments such as “You know that feeling you get…when you see a wide open field that you can run through without worrying about traffic or cars? That’s freedom.” But as the book progresses, Shamir slowly steadies the craft toward that wide-open field of freedom. She notes the many obvious-to-us-now exclusivities that the founding political documents embodied—that the entitled, white, male authors did not extend freedom to enslaved African-Americans, Native Americans, and women—and encourages readers to learn to exercise vigilance and foresight. The gradual inclusion of these left-behind people paints a modestly rosy picture of their circumstances today, and the text seems to give up on explaining how Native Americans continue to be left behind. Still, a vital part of what makes freedom daunting is its constant motion, and that is ably expressed. Numerous boxed tidbits give substance to the bigger political picture. Who were the abolitionists and the suffragists, what were the Montgomery bus boycott and the “Uprising of 20,000”? Faulkner’s artwork conveys settings and emotions quite well, and his drawing of Ruby Bridges is about as darling as it gets. A helpful timeline and bibliography appear as endnotes.
A reasonably solid grounding in constitutional rights, their flexibility, lacunae, and hard-won corrections, despite a few misfires. (Informational picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-54728-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
Categories: CHILDREN'S HISTORY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL SCIENCES
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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. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
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