In the early 19th century in upstate New York, young Abbie despairs of ever making stitches as fine and even as her older sister Sarah’s. She would much rather be reading. Every Wednesday, Abbie goes with Sarah to Mrs. Brown, who has been teaching the girls needlework for several years. Abbie is now old enough to plan her first sampler: the alphabet, her numbers, a border. She works on it through the autumn and winter, always wishing she were reading instead. In the spring, she struggles to choose the picture and the saying that will be on her sampler. When she decides on something very important to her, her teacher and parents are at first surprised but then pleased. Her parents give her not only a needlework box like Sarah’s with her own thimble, scissors and needles, but a book of her very own. The illustrations have freely drawn impressionistic backgrounds and nicely detailed facial expressions and needlework bits. (sources, afterword) (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2006
ISBN: 0-374-30004-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2006
Rappaport makes this long struggle palpable and relevant, while Faulkner adds a winning mix of gravitas and high spirits.
Rappaport examines the salient successes and raw setbacks along the 144-year-long road between the nation’s birth and women’s suffrage.
This lively yet forthright narrative pivots on a reality that should startle modern kids: women’s right to vote was only achieved in 1920, 72 years after Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York. Indeed, time’s passage figures as a textual motif, connecting across decades such determined women as Stanton, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucy Stone. They spoke tirelessly, marched, organized, and got arrested. Rappaport includes events such as 1913’s Women’s Suffrage Parade in Washington, D.C., but doesn’t shy from divisive periods like the Civil War. Faulkner’s meticulously researched gouache-and-ink illustrations often infuse scenes with humor by playing with size and perspective. As Stanton and Lucretia Mott sail into London in 1840 for the World Anti-Slavery Conference, Faulkner depicts the two women as giants on the ship’s upper deck. On the opposite page, as they learn they’ll be barred as delegates, they’re painted in miniature, dwarfed yet unflappable beneath a gallery full of disapproving men. A final double-page spread mingles such modern stars as Shirley Chisholm and Sonia Sotomayor amid the historical leaders.
Rappaport makes this long struggle palpable and relevant, while Faulkner adds a winning mix of gravitas and high spirits. (biographical thumbnails, chronology, sources, websites, further reading, author’s note) (Picture book/biography. 6-8)Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7868-5142-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
A thrilling story, at once preposterous and divinely ingenious. The rude and awful outlaw Ubo Skald has laid siege to the kingdom of Beda; all the villagers and their stock have taken refuge behind Beda’s thick walls. Although the invaders have so far been kept at bay, Birgitta the Brave, the princess-ruler, is certain the seige will eventually succeed because they don’t have enough food. Counsel from the town elders is futile, for they are a witless lot; Birgitta devises a plan of her own. Among its highlights: dressing five mischievous village children as goats, a dangerous foray by the disguised princess to the outlaw camp, and a goodly dose of trickery that preys upon the robbers’ superstitions. This outrageous story is based on actual events—Swedes attacking a German town, children dressing as goats to confuse the invaders—tweaked only slightly by Lewis (Boshblobberbosh, 1998, etc.), who knows (and then retells) a good story when he hears it. Natchev’s paintings have the delicate and sumptuous qualities of religious icons, resembling the tapestries on which other grand stories have been told, but far funnier. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8037-1870-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1999
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
