Kudos to a title that recognizes a previously uncelebrated African-American woman of achievement.
Society ladies and screen actresses made Ann Cole Lowe’s gowns famous, but no one credited their African-American designer.
The great-granddaughter of a slave, Ann grew up in Alabama sewing with her mother. When she was just 16, her mother died, but Ann kept on with the work, finishing a gown for the wife of the governor. She was able to attend design school in New York City in 1917, albeit sitting alone in a segregated classroom. As the proprietor of her own business, Ann was in much demand with very wealthy and high-profile women. Olivia de Havilland accepted her 1947 Oscar wearing an Ann Cole Lowe gown. In 1953, a rich socialite named Jaqueline Bouvier married a Massachusetts senator named John F. Kennedy wearing one of Lowe’s couture creations. Lowe worked hard and eventually began to receive long-overdue recognition. Freeman’s crisply colorful artwork enlivens the clear and accessible narration. The endpapers featuring pictures of Lowe’s runway-perfect gowns and fabric swatches in the page design will delight young fashionistas, while the vignette of Ann in a classroom sitting by herself against a solid white background speaks volumes.
Kudos to a title that recognizes a previously uncelebrated African-American woman of achievement. (author’s note) (Picture book/biography. 5-8)Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4998-0239-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little Bee Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Not essential but a handsome tribute.
For children who can read And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street without help, an account of its creator’s life and career.
Klimo teams up with the illustrators of Kathleen Krull’s The Boy on Fairfield Street (2004) to tell the same tale in (somewhat) simpler language. Opening with the news of his Pulitzer Prize win—“Not bad for a lifelong doodler!”—she follows “Ted” from birth on. It’s a lightweight chronicle that includes his youth and early career as a cartoonist, his personal and public lives, his major picture-book successes and breakthrough easy readers, and his work as the publisher of the Beginner Books imprint. Johnson and Fancher incorporate actual Seussian artwork into their golden-toned paintings, including some commercial work but not, happily, the now-discomfiting racial caricatures he drew during World War II when, as the author diplomatically puts it, he “poked fun at Hitler and Japan.” Along with views of the man himself at various ages, the illustrators include racially diverse groups of children and (something of a stretch) publishers raptly reading or listening. There is no bibliography, and the recent string of posthumous publications goes unmentioned. Still, newly independent readers will come away with a picture of the creative genius behind the Cat, the Grinch, and all that incomparable wordplay.
Not essential but a handsome tribute. (Early reader/biography. 5-7)Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-93551-4
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
Obliquely told and unevenly illustrated, this Slinky story’s just OK.
Ford portrays the back story of the Slinky, the coiled steel toy that debuted in 1945 and still sells today.
Richard James, a white naval engineer at a Philadelphia shipyard, discovers that a torsion spring, aided by gravity, can “walk” from an incline. James and his wife, Betty, persevere to create and market the toy. Securing a $500 bank loan to produce 400 units, Richard demonstrates the toy at Gimbels during the holiday season, selling all 400 Slinkys in 90 minutes. Later, he designs machinery that speeds fabrication. Ford’s reductive narrative portrays the couple as an enterprising unit: as production shifts to a factory, it “took the teamwork of a dreamer and a planner to turn an ordinary spring… / into a truly marvelous thing!” Betty’s role in resurrecting the company from near bankruptcy in 1960, after Richard “left to do missionary work in Bolivia,” is relegated to a note. Ford omits the couple’s divorce, six kids, why the company foundered, and that Betty ran it successfully until its 1998 sale. Busy illustrations combine digitally created cutouts with found objects, photographed in dioramas. While some of the cartoonish figures are depicted as people of color, most are white, tinted various pinks. Found objects seem haphazardly chosen and integrated compared to the superior constructions of Melissa Sweet.
Obliquely told and unevenly illustrated, this Slinky story’s just OK. (bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-5065-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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