In 1965, schools in Drew, Miss. remained strictly segregated in spite of the 11-year-old Supreme Court decision declaring segregation unconstitutional. Bertha and Matthew Carter decided to enroll their children in the all-white schools. For years afterward, they dealt with the loss of their livelihood, daily taunts and humiliations and violence. The struggle finally eased a little when a few more black children enrolled in the white schools. Rappaport is careful to use documented facts and dialogue to impart the loneliness, courage and determination of this remarkable, extraordinary family. James’s strong, heavily outlined illustrations emphasize the powerful family dynamics in the face of hatred. Nevertheless, there is something lacking. Its determined simplicity expunges much information from the text; questions will surely follow. Many additional interesting details are found in the introduction, author’s note and most especially in the Carter Family History. Intended for all ages, the youngest readers will need the guidance of adults in understanding the work as a complete entity. (bibliography) (Picture book/nonfiction. 8-10)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7868-1838-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2005
PLB 0-06-027821-8 For Aliki (Marianthe’s Story, 1998, etc.), the story of the Globe Theatre is a tale of two men: Shakespeare, who made it famous, and Sam Wanamaker, the driving force behind its modern rebuilding. Decorating margins with verbal and floral garlands, Aliki creates a cascade of landscapes, crowd scenes, diminutive portraits, and sequential views, all done with her trademark warmth and delicacy of line, allowing viewers to glimpse Elizabethan life and theater, historical sites that still stand, and the raising of the new Globe near the ashes of the old. She finishes with a play list, and a generous helping of Shakespearean coinages. Though the level of information doesn’t reach that of Diane Stanley’s Bard of Avon (1992), this makes a serviceable introduction to Shakespeare’s times while creating a link between those times and the present; further tempt young readers for whom the play’s the thing with Marcia Williams’s Tales From Shakespeare (1998). (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-10)
Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-027820-X
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
Leedy (Measuring Penny, 1998, etc.), so deft in making hard facts memorable and setting information into a context that makes sense to children, selects a hodge-podge of details and miscellany to convey a sense of what every state is about, as either a political entity or a place. Into lively, effulgent illustrations she plants a monotonous, forgettable list of items to distinguish every state: a map, the state flower and bird, a whiff of landscape, a glimpse of industry. There’s little about such a list—e.g., wheat, pronghorn, western meadowlark, prairie rose, Sitting Bull—to shout, in that example, “North Dakota” to children. The alphabetical listing—Alaska through Wyoming, four states a spread, with room for the US territories and Washington, D.C.—will help researchers, although it necessarily separates states that have natural geographic or historic connections, such as Vermont and New Hampshire, or West Virginia and Virginia, divided during the Civil War. Readers gain a good, first-line resource, with all the enthusiasm Leedy has made her trademark, but without much chance that they’ll adopt the excitement. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1999
ISBN: 0-8234-1431-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1999
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