A true story, aside from snatches of invented dialogue, this account centers on a young blind man’s determination to become less dependent on the whims and charity of others. Following up a 1927 newspaper article about the use of dogs to help disabled vets in Europe, Morris Frank traveled alone from Tennessee to Switzerland—though it meant being “mailed” like a package via American Express, being locked in his stateroom at night and other indignities—to meet two animal trainers and Buddy, a German Shepard. Following a challenging but successful regimen designed to help them bond and to develop mutual trust, man and dog returned to the U.S., where they founded a school for seeing-eye teams that is still in existence. Told in simple language and illustrated with staid but competently done illustrations, much enhanced by a section of photos at the end, this serviceable alternative to Eva Moore’s Buddy, the First Seeing Eye Dog (1996), illus by Don Bolognese, imparts revealing insights both into how blind people were treated prior to the past few decades, and how complex the job of a seeing eye dog is. (Nonfiction. 7-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-8075-5284-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
Strong rhythms and occasional full or partial rhymes give this account of P.T. Barnum’s 1884 elephant parade across the newly opened Brooklyn Bridge an incantatory tone. Catching a whiff of public concern about the new bridge’s sturdiness, Barnum seizes the moment: “’I will stage an event / that will calm every fear, erase every worry, / about that remarkable bridge. / My display will amuse, inform / and astound some. / Or else my name isn’t Barnum!’” Using a rich palette of glowing golds and browns, Roca imbues the pachyderms with a calm solidity, sending them ambling past equally solid-looking buildings and over a truly monumental bridge—which soars over a striped Big Top tent in the final scene. A stately rendition of the episode, less exuberant, but also less fictionalized, than Phil Bildner’s Twenty-One Elephants (2004), illustrated by LeUyen Pham. (author’s note, resource list) (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-44887-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
Spinning lively invented details around skimpy historical records, Taylor profiles the 19th-century chef credited with inventing the potato chip. Crum, thought to be of mixed Native-American and African-American ancestry, was a lover of the outdoors, who turned cooking skills learned from a French hunter into a kitchen job at an upscale resort in New York state. As the story goes, he fried up the first batch of chips in a fit of pique after a diner complained that his French fries were cut too thickly. Morrison’s schoolroom, kitchen and restaurant scenes seem a little more integrated than would have been likely in the 1850s, but his sinuous figures slide through them with exaggerated elegance, adding a theatrical energy as delicious as the snack food they celebrate. The author leaves Crum presiding over a restaurant (also integrated) of his own, closes with a note separating fact from fiction and also lists her sources. (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-58430-255-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lee & Low Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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