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KID BLINK BEATS THE WORLD

Name: KID BLINK BEATS THE WORLD
Author: Don Brown
ISBN: 1-59643-003-6

by Don Brown & illustrated by Don Brown ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2004

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“It was all for a penny.” When Mr. Pulitzer and Mr. Hearst decided to make New York City newsies pay a penny more for each stack of papers to sell, Kid Blink, Race Track Higgins, Crutch Morris, and others led a strike; they would stop sales until the price was rolled back. Brown’s cartoon illustrations are a perfect complement to the text, the signature hollow-eyed, potato-headed characters dramatic in their defiance of the owners of The World and The Journal. Readers and listeners will appreciate the lively writing and the humorous, dramatic illustrations. Students might enjoy tracking down sources listed in the bibliography, including newspaper accounts from 1899 and Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives. Unfortunately, Brown’s narrative makes a hero out of Kid Blink without considering, in the text or author’s note, accusations that Kid Blink later betrayed the movement. Susan Campbell Bartoletti’s Kids On Strike (2003) and The Journal of Finn Reardon: A Newsie (2003) are excellent resources for readers who want to read more about the newsies. (Picture book/nonfiction. 5-9)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004

ISBN: 1-59643-003-6

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Roaring Brook Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2004

Categories:

CHILDREN'S HISTORY

- BOOK REVIEW
RUN AND HIDE
by Don Brown ; illustrated by Don Brown

- BOOK REVIEW
83 DAYS IN MARIUPOL
by Don Brown ; illustrated by Don Brown

- BOOK REVIEW
WE THE PEOPLE!
by Don Brown ; illustrated by Don Brown

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ELEANOR

by Barbara Cooney & illustrated by Barbara Cooney ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1996

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"From the beginning the baby was a disappointment to her mother," Cooney (The Story of Christmas, 1995, etc.) begins in this biography of Eleanor Roosevelt. She is a plain child, timid and serious; it is clear that only a few people loved her. After her parents die, she is cared for in the luxurious homes of wealthy relatives, but does not find acceptance until she arrives in a British boarding school, where she thrives on the attention of the headmistress, who guides, teaches, and inspires her. Cooney does not gloss over the girl's misery and disappointments; she also shows the rare happy times and sows the seeds of Eleanor's future work. The illustrations of house interiors often depict Eleanor as an isolated, lonely figure, her indistinct face and hollow eyes watching from a distance the human interactions she does not yet enjoy. Paintings reveal the action of a steamship collision; the hectic activity of a park full of children and their governesses; a night full of stars portending the girl's luminous future. The image of plain Eleanor being fitted with her first beautiful dress is an indelible one. Readers will be moved by the unfairness of her early life and rejoice when she finds her place in the world. An author's note supplies other relevant information. (Picture book/biography. 5-9)

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-670-86159-6

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories:

CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CHILDREN'S HISTORY

- BOOK REVIEW
THE STORY OF CHRISTMAS
by Barbara Cooney & illustrated by Loretta Krupinski

- BOOK REVIEW
THE REMARKABLE CHRISTMAS OF THE COBBLER'S SONS
adapted by Ruth Sawyer & illustrated by Barbara Cooney

- BOOK REVIEW
ONLY OPAL
by Opal Whiteley & edited by Jane Boulton & illustrated by Barbara Cooney

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TWENTY-ONE ELEPHANTS AND STILL STANDING

by April Jones Prince & illustrated by François Roca ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 2005

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Strong rhythms and occasional full or partial rhymes give this account of P.T. Barnum’s 1884 elephant parade across the newly opened Brooklyn Bridge an incantatory tone. Catching a whiff of public concern about the new bridge’s sturdiness, Barnum seizes the moment: “’I will stage an event / that will calm every fear, erase every worry, / about that remarkable bridge. / My display will amuse, inform / and astound some. / Or else my name isn’t Barnum!’” Using a rich palette of glowing golds and browns, Roca imbues the pachyderms with a calm solidity, sending them ambling past equally solid-looking buildings and over a truly monumental bridge—which soars over a striped Big Top tent in the final scene. A stately rendition of the episode, less exuberant, but also less fictionalized, than Phil Bildner’s Twenty-One Elephants (2004), illustrated by LeUyen Pham. (author’s note, resource list) (Picture book. 7-9)