A timely book about the importance of persevering in the struggle for equality.
A girl recounts the struggles she and her friends went through to be admitted to an all-white school in Rigaud and Penn’s nonfiction picture book.
Narrated in the voice of Black student marcher Joyce Clemons, the story opens with Joyce explaining that she and her fellow students had to walk 600 miles to be treated fairly at school. When Joyce was young in the 1950s, even though segregation was against the law, the Hillsboro School Board wouldn’t let Black students attend Webster Elementary, an all-white school, even after a fire had damaged a Hillsboro school Black students attended. Together, Black mothers and students marched to Webster every day, only to be turned away at the door. But they kept going: “We stepped over the box lines on the calendar, across the rows of dates, and down the page, until it flipped and we started at the top again.” They marched for 300 days—two school years—before a judge ruled in their favor. Rigaud and Penn navigate themes of injustice and prejudice from a child’s eye view, making it easy to see that the system wrongly kept Joyce and her friends out. Lilly’s painterly digital illustrations integrate photographs and news clippings, firmly grounding the story in historical evidence. The book includes portraits of the 19 mothers who marched, and endnotes offer a timeline and further historical details.
A timely book about the importance of persevering in the struggle for equality.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780999661383
Page Count: 46
Publisher: Daydreamers Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Enthusiastic and direct, this paean has a lovely ring to it.
Former National Youth Poet Laureate Gorman invites girls to raise their voices and make a difference.
“Today, we finally have a say,” proclaims the first-person plural narration as three girls (one presents Black, another is brown-skinned, and the third is light-skinned) pass one another marshmallows on a stick around a campfire. In Wise’s textured, almost three-dimensional illustrations, the trio traverse fantastical, often abstract landscapes, playing, demonstrating, eating, and even flying, while confident rhymes sing their praises and celebrate collective female victories. The phrase “LIBERATION. FREEDOM. RESPECT” appears on a protest sign that bookends their journey. Simple and accessible, the rhythmic visual storytelling presents an optimistic vision of young people working toward a better world. Sometimes family members or other diverse comrades surround the girls, emphasizing that power comes from community. Gorman is careful to specify that “some of us go by she / And some of us go by they.” She affirms, too, that each person is “a different shape and size,” though the art doesn’t show much variation in body type. Characters also vary in ability. Real-life figures emerge as the girls dream of past luminaries such as author Octavia Butler and activist Marsha P. Johnson, along with present-day role models including poet and journalist Plestia Alaqad and athlete Sha’carri Richardson; silhouettes stand in for heroines as yet unknown. Imagining that “we are where change is going” is hopeful indeed.
Enthusiastic and direct, this paean has a lovely ring to it. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780593624180
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Lovely illustrations wasted on this misguided project.
The Celebrate the World series spotlights Lunar New Year.
This board book blends expository text and first-person-plural narrative, introducing readers to the holiday. Chau’s distinctive, finely textured watercolor paintings add depth, transitioning smoothly from a grand cityscape to the dining room table, from fantasies of the past to dumplings of the present. The text attempts to provide a broad look at the subject, including other names for the celebration, related cosmology, and historical background, as well as a more-personal discussion of traditions and practices. Yet it’s never clear who the narrator is—while the narrative indicates the existence of some consistent, monolithic group who participates in specific rituals of celebration (“Before the new year celebrations begin, we clean our homes—and ourselves!”), the illustrations depict different people in every image. Indeed, observances of Lunar New Year are as diverse as the people who celebrate it, which neither the text nor the images—all of the people appear to be Asian—fully acknowledges. Also unclear is the book’s intended audience. With large blocks of explication on every spread, it is entirely unappealing for the board-book set, and the format may make it equally unattractive to an older, more appropriate audience. Still, readers may appreciate seeing an important celebration warmly and vibrantly portrayed.
Lovely illustrations wasted on this misguided project. (Board book. 4-8)Pub Date: Dec. 11, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3303-8
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
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