An excellent title that provides an admirably accurate picture of slavery in America for younger readers.
The White House is truly the people’s house.
From foundation to finish, many hands toiled to construct a home for the leader of the new country. Free men and slaves worked with stone, wood and brick, using hands that were both skilled and unskilled. Smith uses rhyming verse to tell their stories with words that are powerful and descriptive. They are constructed to be read aloud; performed, even. Cooper works in his signature palette of muted browns and yellows and succeeds admirably in depicting individualized faces filled with weariness and pride. The tedium of each step involved in the construction of the White House had more than one result. A beautiful building arose in Washington, D.C., only to be destroyed by the British in the War of 1812. Just as important, enslaved workers learned skills that brought in money that bought their freedom. By giving the slaves names, Smith elevates them from mere numbers to individuals determined to shape their lives for the better. “Month by month, / slave hands toil, / planting seeds of freedom / in fertile soil.”
An excellent title that provides an admirably accurate picture of slavery in America for younger readers. (author’s note, selected resources) (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-192082-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2012
Even very young dinosaur devotees will have no trouble finding better pickings elsewhere.
A pooch with, in previous outings, a penchant for straying touristically in various modern cities takes a quick scoot through the age of the dinosaurs, and after.
Having dozed off while his human buddy Pete is studying, Larry “wakes” beneath the feet of a huge, plant-eating sauropod and then flees from a T. Rex, going past various armored and feathered dinos. He goes on to get glimpses of Cretaceous fliers and swimmers, then trots through the Cenozoic Era to the Stone Age and, at last, his modern dinner. In illustrations that look like scraped screen prints, the prehistoric critters are recognizable in shape but monochromatically colored. The often low-contrast or pastel hues are as flat as the main narrative’s verse: “These guys look scary, / With armor and spikes. / But that’s just for defense; / It’s plants that they like.” Along with unexplained terminology (“Cretaceous-Paleogene Extinction Event”), the accompanying prose captions offer such awkwardly phrased gems as: “If something becomes buried under the right conditions, the evidence of it can last for millions of years.”
Even very young dinosaur devotees will have no trouble finding better pickings elsewhere. (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-57061-862-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sasquatch
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A good introduction to the growing knowledge of the vital role slaves played in building Washington, D.C.
A slave in Washington, D.C., has the expertise to make possible the casting in bronze of the statue atop the Capitol Building.
As a child, Reid learned to work with clay and wood from an older slave on a plantation in South Carolina. Sold to Clark Mills, a sculptor, Reid mastered the skills required to create bronze statues. When Mills was commissioned to cast the plaster mold of the Statue of Freedom in 1859, he took Reid with him. To everyone’s consternation, the plaster model was in one piece, and the Italian craftsman responsible for this wanted more money to disassemble it into its constituent parts. It was Reid who carefully determined where the seams were so that the mold could be separated and moved to a foundry to be cast. During the Civil War, the statue was placed on the Capitol dome, and slaves in the District of Columbia were granted emancipation. Paperwork from Reid’s owner requesting promised payment for his manumitted slaves is reproduced on the endpapers. Lapham and Walton invent dialogue in their narration, but they make Reid’s work exciting and provide a good picture of what little is known of him. Christie’s paintings are characteristically powerful, more impressionistic than realistic. Sources and further reading would have been a plus.
A good introduction to the growing knowledge of the vital role slaves played in building Washington, D.C. (epilogue, authors’ note) (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-58536-819-8
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
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