In a companion to Amelia to Zora (2005), Chin-Lee selects an alphabetical array of men for the same treatment—a two or three paragraph biographical précis that includes a childhood incident, a description of important accomplishments and a pithy quote. Though such usual suspects as Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela are in the broadly international lineup, so are plenty of surprises (as you’d guess from the title), from filmmaker Akira Kurosawa and composer Zoltán Kodaly to Pashtun leader Badshah Abdul Ghaffa Khan, poet Octavio Paz, athlete Greg Louganis and bandleader Xavier Cugat Mingall. Using cut-paper shapes and paint, Halsey and Addy add stylized but generally recognizable figurative or symbolic portraits for each—posing Frank Lloyd Wright against a glittering stained glass window, for instance, but substituting a cello for Yo Yo Ma, and a dog and a bell for Ivan Petrovich Pavlov. Though most of these men are no longer active, or even living, and not all “changed the world” to quite the same degree, they’re still worth knowing. (source list) (Picture book/collective biography. 8-10)
Pub Date: July 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-57091-579-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2006
PLB 0-06-027821-8 For Aliki (Marianthe’s Story, 1998, etc.), the story of the Globe Theatre is a tale of two men: Shakespeare, who made it famous, and Sam Wanamaker, the driving force behind its modern rebuilding. Decorating margins with verbal and floral garlands, Aliki creates a cascade of landscapes, crowd scenes, diminutive portraits, and sequential views, all done with her trademark warmth and delicacy of line, allowing viewers to glimpse Elizabethan life and theater, historical sites that still stand, and the raising of the new Globe near the ashes of the old. She finishes with a play list, and a generous helping of Shakespearean coinages. Though the level of information doesn’t reach that of Diane Stanley’s Bard of Avon (1992), this makes a serviceable introduction to Shakespeare’s times while creating a link between those times and the present; further tempt young readers for whom the play’s the thing with Marcia Williams’s Tales From Shakespeare (1998). (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-10)
Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-027820-X
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
A sneeze and a cow kicking over the milk launches this true tale of a 17-year-old dairymaid in England in 1683; Molly was subsequently accused of stealing her lordship’s milk and brought before a court. Sentenced to seven years of bondage in America, she then struck out on her own, staked a claim and raised tobacco. She bought an African slave named Bannaky, who taught her about irrigation and crop rotation; when they fell in love, she freed him so that they could be legally married. Molly eventually taught her grandson, the famed Benjamin Banneker, how to read and write. McGill’s telling is fine and sure, except for an unwieldy flashback in the beginning that explains a previous spilling of milk. Soentpiet adds to the drama of the story with bold, atmospheric paintings. The problem comes in the matching of text to art; the pacing, for children, is horrible at first, with a scene of Molly facing a courtroom of stone-faced men before she has even spilled the milk (the text to gets the courtroom mid- paragraph). Later, the scene of her working for someone else with two oxen is too similar to her striking out on her own with one ox; the scene of her realizing she can’t manage on her own shows several other people working alongside her. These don’t destroy the suspense, but will compromise the accessibility of the story for children. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-72287-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1999
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