Inspiringly shows how Maria Tallchief persisted and made her dreams come true.
Maria Tallchief is an American ballet legend, but she came from a humble beginning.
Elizabeth “Betty” Marie Tall Chief grew up on the Osage reservation in northeastern Oklahoma at a time when Osage children were told not to speak their language and to forget their tribal customs even as they enjoyed uncommon wealth due to their reservation’s rich oil deposits. She and her family attended secret powwows, and the songs’ powerful rhythms remained with Betty all her life. After moving to California at 8, she began dance school. Not only was she good at ballet, but she moved ahead academically. But Betty was bullied for her name, so she changed it to one word: Tallchief. Betty “lived and breathed the art of ballet,” listening when her mother offered wise words and encouragement to “dance with all your heart….You shouldn’t just expect a role to be handed to you.” Years later, when she traveled around the world, dancing in famous ballets, she again changed her name from Betty to a variation of her middle name Maria but resisted advice to change her surname, retaining it to honor her family and her Osage identity. Day (Upper Skagit) clearly shows that even as Tallchief became a star in the world of ballet, she never forgot her roots and gives readers necessary history and context to understand their importance. Flint’s black-and-white illustrations excel at depictions of Tallchief in motion.
Inspiringly shows how Maria Tallchief persisted and made her dreams come true. (author's note, bibliography) (Biography. 6-9)Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-11580-0
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
Good fun wrapped in a cracking piece of characterization and history.
A dramatic telling of Lindbergh’s flight from New York City to Paris, France.
Houran conveys readers to a time when flying was still a daredevil activity and aces such as René Fonck were international celebrities. Flying contests were common in the 1920s, and as the planes got better, so did the prizes. The Orteig Prize, named after a New York City hotelier who set the challenge, would pay $25,000 to the first flyer to make a nonstop journey from New York City to Paris. Lindbergh was a stuntman and a barnstormer before he decided to take a shot at the challenge. One of the beauties of Houran’s reconstruction of the event is that it brings Lindbergh’s feat into focus: He was not the first to fly across the Atlantic; he did not fly on a wing and a prayer but planned extensively; a number of other, more famous flyers were in the race, including Fonck and Richard E. Byrd, who had recently flown to the North Pole. She also tips her hat to Lindbergh’s tactical wizardry and keeps the tale not just at a high pitch (“He buckled his safety belt. He pulled on his flying helmet. He fit his goggles over his eyes”), but in a lather: “LINDBERGH! the crowd cried....The crowd lifted him above their heads. They bounced him along like a beach ball!”
Good fun wrapped in a cracking piece of characterization and history. (Nonfiction. 6-9)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-38284-7
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
An appealing, lively portrait that may nonetheless fail to pique the interest of many in the intended audience.
This brief biography of Jane Austen describes her life and notes the hardships and expectations she overcame to become a published author.
Pliscou paints a vivid picture of the world Jane was born into, from the physical environment of home and village to the strictures on women’s accomplishments and experiences. The relatively lengthy text flows smoothly. It details the hardships that Jane and her family faced, from financial difficulties both before and after her father’s death to Jane’s survival of (and long, book-filled recuperation from) a serious illness, and emphasizes that despite these challenges Jane was dedicated to perfecting her craft. Corace’s illustrations, created using gouache, ink, acrylic, and pencil, have a stylized look and a relatively limited, somewhat subdued palette. They effectively evoke the historic period and include a nod to a popular decorative style of the day in an attractive double-page spread of silhouettes that conveys Jane’s determination as she “read, sewed, planned menus…went to parties, helped to take care of her parents, and…kept on writing her funny, thoughtful stories.” As Deborah Hopkinson and Qin Leng do in Ordinary, Extraordinary Jane Austen (2018), Pliscou introduces a revered author for adults to an audience who has likely never heard of her; as recorded here, Austen’s quiet life doesn’t give children much to latch onto.
An appealing, lively portrait that may nonetheless fail to pique the interest of many in the intended audience. (author’s note, quotations, bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 7-9)Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-62779-643-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
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