Bertholf’s slightly irreverent, highly entertaining historical junket transports readers through a century of musical detours and developments in a jam-packed tour de force of everything you ever wanted to know about American country music. Progressing chronologically from pre-radio barn dances to the early recording industry, to Depression soup lines and gospel singing, on to celluloid singing cowboys and hillbilly jazz into WWII and the emergence of Nashville and honky-tonk, rock-a-billy and bluegrass, right up to the current country-music craze, Bertholf unearths country music’s myriad roots. Amusing, interactive introductions to popular country instruments, apparel, pets, vehicles, dances, nicknames, hairstyles and foods, as well as a glossary of common country words, yodeling instructions, cameo biographies of country-music all-stars and caricatures of every famous country singer from 1920 to 1999, complete this diverting and informative package. Humorous illustrations in colored pencil and crayon evoke the mood of the times and provide diverting detail. If y’all hanker for some rib-ticklin’ fun and cotton to learn more about country music, this one’s for you. (Nonfiction. 6-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-316-52393-3
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2007
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This second early biography of Cousteau in a year echoes Jennifer Berne’s Manfish: A Story of Jacques Cousteau (2008), illustrated by Eric Puybaret, in offering visuals that are more fanciful than informational, but also complements it with a focus less on the early life of the explorer and eco-activist than on his later inventions and achievements. In full-bleed scenes that are often segmented and kaleidoscopic, Yaccarino sets his hook-nosed subject amid shoals of Impressionistic fish and other marine images, rendered in multiple layers of thinly applied, imaginatively colored paint. His customarily sharp, geometric lines take on the wavy translucence of undersea shapes with a little bit of help from the airbrush. Along with tracing Cousteau’s undersea career from his first, life-changing, pair of goggles and the later aqualung to his minisub Sea Flea, the author pays tribute to his revolutionary film and TV work, and his later efforts to call attention to the effects of pollution. Cousteau’s enduring fascination with the sea comes through clearly, and can’t help sparking similar feelings in readers. (chronology, source list) (Picture book/biography. 6-8)
Pub Date: March 24, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-375-85573-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2009
Categories: CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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The legions of fans who over the years have enjoyed dePaola’s autobiographical picture books will welcome this longer gathering of reminiscences. Writing in an authentically childlike voice, he describes watching the new house his father was building go up despite a succession of disasters, from a brush fire to the hurricane of 1938. Meanwhile, he also introduces family, friends, and neighbors, adds Nana Fall River to his already well-known Nana Upstairs and Nana Downstairs, remembers his first day of school (“ ‘ When do we learn to read?’ I asked. ‘Oh, we don’t learn how to read in kindergarten. We learn to read next year, in first grade.’ ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll be back next year.’ And I walked right out of school.”), recalls holidays, and explains his indignation when the plot of Disney’s “Snow White” doesn’t match the story he knows. Generously illustrated with vignettes and larger scenes, this cheery, well-knit narrative proves that an old dog can learn new tricks, and learn them surpassingly well. (Autobiography. 7-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-399-23246-X
Page Count: 58
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1999
Categories: CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
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