While the author justifiably bemoans the disproportionate number of titles about African-Americans that focus on slavery,...
Tate paints a portrait of a North Carolina man who pursued his passion for language through long years of enslavement.
Nothing about the life of a slave could truly be deemed “lucky,” but George Horton was fortunate to live where he did. When he was growing up, literacy was not yet against the law for slaves. Fascinated by the power of words, Horton taught himself to read and began composing verses. His owner eventually allowed him to live in nearby Chapel Hill and work as a writer. His earnings were not his own, and he deeply felt the pain of his circumstances, but writing poems and living among educated people was better than the back-breaking labor most slaves performed. Straightforward, accessible text covers the basic facts and evokes, albeit in an understated way, the hardships Horton faced. Created in mixed media, including gouache, pencil, ink, and digital, luminous illustrations provide context and convey emotion. Double-page spreads, insets, and vignettes show George as he ages and moves from the rural life of his childhood to town and, for a brief period, out West.
While the author justifiably bemoans the disproportionate number of titles about African-Americans that focus on slavery, his decision to illuminate this remarkable man’s life offers a new perspective with remarkable clarity. (bibliography, author’s note, acknowledgements) (Picture book/biography. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-56145-825-7
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Peachtree
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
A succinct, edifying read, but don’t buy it for the pictures.
Abraham Lincoln’s ascent to the presidency is recounted in a fluid, easy-to-read biography for early readers.
Simple, direct sentences stress Lincoln’s humble upbringing, his honesty, and his devotion to acting with moral conviction. “Lincoln didn’t seem like a man who would be president one day. But he studied hard and became a lawyer. He cared about people and about justice.” Slavery and Lincoln’s signature achievement of emancipation are explained in broad yet defined, understandable analogies. “At that time, in the South, the law let white people own black people, just as they owned a house or a horse.” Readers are clearly given the president’s perspective through some documented memorable quotes from his own letters. “Lincoln did not like slavery. ‘If slavery is not wrong,’ he wrote to a friend ‘nothing is wrong.’ ” (The text does not clarify that this letter was written in 1865 and not before he ascended to the presidency, as implied by the book.) As the war goes on and Lincoln makes his decision to free the slaves in the “Southern states”—“a bold move”—Lincoln’s own words describe his thinking: “ ‘If my name ever goes into history,’ Lincoln said, ‘it will be for this act.’ ” A very basic timeline, which mentions the assassination unaddressed in the text, is followed by backmatter providing photographs, slightly more detailed historical information, and legacy. It’s a pity that the text is accompanied by unremarkable, rudimentary opaque paintings.
A succinct, edifying read, but don’t buy it for the pictures. (Informational early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: June 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-243256-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
Stirring encouragement for all “little people” with “big dreams.” (Picture book/biography. 5-7)
“There’s nothing I can’t be,” young Maya thinks, and then shows, in this profile for newly independent readers, imported from Spain.
The inspirational message is conveyed through a fine skein of biographical details. It begins with her birth in St. Louis and the prejudice she experienced growing up in a small Arkansas town and closes with her reading of a poem “about her favorite thing: hope” at Bill Clinton’s presidential inauguration. In between, it mentions the (unspecified) “attack” by her mother’s boyfriend and subsequent elective muteness she experienced as a child, as well as some of the varied pursuits that preceded her eventual decision to become a writer. Kaiser goes on in a closing spread to recap Angelou’s life and career, with dates, beneath a quartet of portrait photos. Salaberria’s simple illustrations, filled with brown-skinned figures, are more idealized than photorealistic, but, though only in the cover image do they make direct contact with readers’, Angelou’s huge eyes are an effective focal point in each scene. The message is similar in the co-published Amelia Earhart, written by Ma Isabel Sánchez Vegara (and also translated by Pitt), but the pictures are more fanciful as illustrator Mariadiamantes endows the aviator with a mane of incandescent orange hair and sends her flying westward (in contradiction of the text and history) on her final around-the-world flight.
Stirring encouragement for all “little people” with “big dreams.” (Picture book/biography. 5-7)Pub Date: July 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-84780-889-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
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