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KARATE HOUR

Name: KARATE HOUR
Author: Carol Nevius
ISBN: 0-7614-5169-2

by Carol Nevius & illustrated by Bill Thomson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2004

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Viewers will definitely feel like participants in this visit to a children’s karate class. Using a palette of creams and grays against dark backgrounds (with color accents provided by variously colored belts), and lighting and low angles that give his close-up, photographically realistic figures a monumental look, Thomson depicts students warming up, practicing strikes and kicks, engaging in some light sparring, then lining up for a closing ritual. In her rhymed commentary and closing note, Nevius briefly describes what’s going on—“We energize. Our muscles flex. / We raise our arms, protect our necks”—while introducing rudiments of karate’s history and “aims to finish what someone else starts” philosophy. Despite the elaborate illustrations, this offers a more superficial view of karate’s inner workings than Anne Rockwell’s Chip and the Karate Kick (p. 447), but nonetheless makes an adequate first introduction for prospective karate-kas. (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-9)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004

ISBN: 0-7614-5169-2

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Marshall Cavendish

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2004

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ENTERTAINMENT & SPORTS

- BOOK REVIEW
SOCCER HOUR
by Carol Nevius & illustrated by Bill Thomson

- BOOK REVIEW
BUILDING WITH DAD
by Carol Nevius & illustrated by Bill Thomson

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JUST LIKE JESSE OWENS

by Andrew Young & Paula Young Shelton ; illustrated by Gordon C. James ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 2, 2022

A pivotal moment in a child’s life, at once stirring and authentically personal.

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Before growing up to become a major figure in the civil rights movement, a boy finds a role model.

Buffing up a childhood tale told by her renowned father, Young Shelton describes how young Andrew saw scary men marching in his New Orleans neighborhood (“It sounded like they were yelling ‘Hi, Hitler!’ ”). In response to his questions, his father took him to see a newsreel of Jesse Owens (“a runner who looked like me”) triumphing in the 1936 Olympics. “Racism is a sickness,” his father tells him. “We’ve got to help folks like that.” How? “Well, you can start by just being the best person you can be,” his father replies. “It’s what you do that counts.” In James’ hazy chalk pastels, Andrew joins racially diverse playmates (including a White child with an Irish accent proudly displaying the nickel he got from his aunt as a bribe to stop playing with “those Colored boys”) in tag and other games, playing catch with his dad, sitting in the midst of a cheering crowd in the local theater’s segregated balcony, and finally visualizing himself pelting down a track alongside his new hero—“head up, back straight, eyes focused,” as a thematically repeated line has it, on the finish line. An afterword by Young Shelton explains that she retold this story, told to her many times growing up, drawing from conversations with Young and from her own research; family photos are also included. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A pivotal moment in a child’s life, at once stirring and authentically personal. (illustrator’s note) (Autobiographical picture book. 7-9)

Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022

ISBN: 978-0-545-55465-7

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Scholastic

Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022

Categories:

CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CHILDREN'S ENTERTAINMENT & SPORTS

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DORY STORY

by Jerry Pallotta ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2000

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Who is next in the ocean food chain? Pallotta has a surprising answer in this picture book glimpse of one curious boy. Danny, fascinated by plankton, takes his dory and rows out into the ocean, where he sees shrimp eating those plankton, fish sand eels eating shrimp, mackerel eating fish sand eels, bluefish chasing mackerel, tuna after bluefish, and killer whales after tuna. When an enormous humpbacked whale arrives on the scene, Danny’s dory tips over and he has to swim for a large rock or become—he worries’someone’s lunch. Surreal acrylic illustrations in vivid blues and red extend the story of a small boy, a small boat, and a vast ocean, in which the laws of the food chain are paramount. That the boy has been bathtub-bound during this entire imaginative foray doesn’t diminish the suspense, and the facts Pallotta presents are solidly researched. A charming fish tale about the one—the boy—that got away. (Picture book. 4-8)