Serviceable as assignment fodder or as a gateway to more searching studies.
A short, occasionally revealing profile of an immigrant who got the job done.
Joining other children’s-book creators attempting to ride the Broadway phenomenon’s coattails, Adler creates a distant, even staid, portrait of Hamilton’s character. Opening and closing with accounts of the Burr duel, he also drops in a few too many names without sufficient context. Still, along with noting his subject’s major public achievements in war and peace and making some references to his private life, he does frankly note in the main narrative that Alexander was born to unmarried parents and in the afterword that he was taken in for a time by a family that may have included a half brother. (The author also makes a revealing if carelessly phrased observation that he helped to run a business in his youth that dealt in “many things,” including “enslaved people.”) Collins’ neatly limned painted scenes lack much sense of movement, but he’s careful with details of historical dress and setting. Most of his figures are light skinned, but there are people of color in early dockside views, in a rank of charging American soldiers, and also (possibly) in a closing parade of mourners. Multichapter biographies abound, but as a first introduction, this entry in Adler’s long-running series won’t bring younger readers to their feet but does fill in around the edges of Don Brown’s Aaron and Alexander: The Most Famous Duel in American History (2015).
Serviceable as assignment fodder or as a gateway to more searching studies. (timeline, bibliography, notes) (Picture book/biography. 7-9)Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3961-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
An engaging and informative true story of perseverance and discovery.
Fern and Kulikov, collaborators on the picture-book biographies Barnum’s Bones (2012) and W is for Webster (2015), bring the self-taught archaeologist who discovered King Tut’s tomb to life.
Howard Carter’s obsession with mummies began when he was a boy in England and visited a nearby mansion filled with ancient Egyptian artifacts. Carter dreamed of discovering a mummy himself. At 17, he took a job copying ancient art for the Egypt Exploration Fund. Awed by the art and architecture he sketched and copied, Carter was eager to make discoveries of his own. He taught himself the methodologies of archaeology, Arabic, geology, Egyptian history, and how to read hieroglyphics. As an antiquities inspector for the Egyptian government, Carter excavated several tombs only to find they had been looted. Undaunted, Carter devised a plan to excavate every unsearched inch in the Valley of the Kings. His dogged persistence paid off in 1922 when he discovered the treasure-filled tomb of Tutankhamun. Quoting from Carter’s own account, Fern infuses her story with excitement. She describes Carter as having a “funky personality” with a “stubborn attitude and worse table manners”; Kulikov’s exaggerated illustrations energetically capture Carter’s ambition and fascination with his subject.
An engaging and informative true story of perseverance and discovery. (author’s note, bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 7-9)Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-374-30305-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
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