An adequate biography of the 26th president is one of four biographies in the vanguard of a new series linked to TIME for Kids. Punctuated by rather too many exclamation points, simple declarative sentences take readers through TR’s life (continually referring to him as “Teddy” despite disclosing that he hated that name), with occasional sidebars offering little tidbits (such as the origin of the teddy bear and Roosevelt’s legacy of conservation). For all its breathlessness, the text does a creditable job of explaining such concepts as monopolies to its upper-elementary audience (but it does struggle with the creation of the Panama Canal), and the illustrations are lavish—at least two to a spread. As nonfiction, however, it falls far short of minimal standards of documentation, lacking even a bibliography. It gets the job done for the most part, and it looks good while doing it, but one is forced to wonder whether the world really needs another just-adequate series of cookie-cutter branded biographies for kids—perhaps “the editors of TIME for Kids®” might consider this before churning out still more. (Nonfiction. 7-10)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-057606-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
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)
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-44887-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
Spinning lively invented details around skimpy historical records, Taylor profiles the 19th-century chef credited with inventing the potato chip. Crum, thought to be of mixed Native-American and African-American ancestry, was a lover of the outdoors, who turned cooking skills learned from a French hunter into a kitchen job at an upscale resort in New York state. As the story goes, he fried up the first batch of chips in a fit of pique after a diner complained that his French fries were cut too thickly. Morrison’s schoolroom, kitchen and restaurant scenes seem a little more integrated than would have been likely in the 1850s, but his sinuous figures slide through them with exaggerated elegance, adding a theatrical energy as delicious as the snack food they celebrate. The author leaves Crum presiding over a restaurant (also integrated) of his own, closes with a note separating fact from fiction and also lists her sources. (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-58430-255-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lee & Low Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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