Koscielniak wowed with The Story of the Incredible Orchestra (2000); he is much less successful here. He opens with a scene at the library (the person at the desk has a bun and glasses, but at least she is using a computer). “Soooo many books,” he writes. He explains the origins of paper and of movable type in China and in Korea before Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press and movable type in Mainz, Germany, around 1450. Koscielniak’s watercolors are bright and engaging, but they, and the text, raise more questions than they answer. The Chinese and Korean figures are clearly Western; scribes in monasteries are those who did the copying of books, but there is no mention that they were monks or of the Church. There is also the moronic comment that “most people didn’t bother to learn to read because they had no access to books”—tossing aside the social history of literacy in a single line. The accompanying illustration is pretty feebleminded, too. Marginalia adds to the information, and the technical descriptions are good. Definitely not for the younger picture book crowd, however. (Nonfiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2003
ISBN: 0-618-26351-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
With but a light sprinkling of names and dates, Myers condenses his Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary (1993) to picture- book length. Myers takes readers through his subject’s childhood and turbulent career, pausing for significant episodes (such as a white teacher’s suggestion that he’d be better off studying carpentry than law), supplying samples of his vivid rhetoric, and tracing his movement toward visions of a more inclusive, less violent revolution. Placing realistic portraits of X and other icons of the civil rights movement against swirling backdrops of faces and street scenes, Jenkins captures a sense of tumultuous times. What emerges most clearly is a portrait of a complex, compelling spokesman who was growing and changing up to the moment he was cut down. (Picture book/biography. 6-8)
Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2000
ISBN: 0-06-027707-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1999
A warm tribute to the WPA-funded “book women” (and men) who rode Kentucky’s backwoods in the 1930s and early ’40s, delivering library service to some of this country’s most impoverished citizens. Gathering information from archives, hard-to-find published sources, and interviews, the authors write feelingly of the Pack Horse Library Program’s origins and the obstacles its dedicated employees overcame. These ranged from the chronic scarcity of books and magazines (nearly all of which were donated) to the rigors of riding, generally alone, over rugged terrain in all weathers. Those rigors are made more immediate by a reconstructed account of a rider’s day: rising at 4:30, stopping at isolated hamlets, cabins, and one-room schools to drop off materials and, sometimes, to read aloud, then plodding wearily home through darkness and drizzle. Supported by a generous array of contemporary photos and sturdy lists of sources and Web sites to give interested readers a leg up on further inquiry, this adds unique insights not just to the history of library service, but of Appalachian culture, and of women’s work in general. (Nonfiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: May 31, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-029135-4
Page Count: 64
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001
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