Vigorous and heartfelt.
A salute to the bicycle as a tool of liberation for women of the past and present.
“A bike is just a bike,” Jeanneret writes, “unless you were a girl on a bike. Then it was a powerful statement.” Mixing images of modern children on wheels with historical scenes of riders briskly exchanging heavily ruffled skirts for bloomers, pedaling off to work, carrying suffragist signs, and breaking athletic and other records, Pereira depicts a racially diverse cast of girls and women speeding proudly across the pages on bikes of different eras or posing with safety helmets and, sometimes, medals. That exuberance is reflected in the author’s commentary, which mixes scornful references to early bogus claims that bike riding was “unladylike” and could lead to “bicycle face” (a condition made up by sexist doctors), bowlegs, or internal illnesses with gleeful insights about how the bicycle helped, and is still helping, women defy expectations about their proper places and duties. “You’re a champion for equality. You’re creating possibilities.” This paean to progress in gender equality includes nods to transgender and Paralympics champions, too; the book closes with a fuller profile of Annie Londonderry, a journalist and self-described “new woman” who biked around the world from 1894 to 1895.
Vigorous and heartfelt. (sources) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 21, 2026
ISBN: 9781962351324
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Gloo Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
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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