Sadly, Van Steenwyk’s affirming narrative and important subject are matched with out-of-sync art.
Van Steenwyk introduces Kate Warne, whose determined skill secured her spot in U.S. history as the country’s first woman detective.
In 1856, the enterprising young white woman persuaded Allan Pinkerton, head of the country’s pre-eminent detective agency, to hire her. Warne convinced Pinkerton that a woman could gain access to situations and information that male detectives couldn’t. As a detective, Warne used disguises and false identities at social events. In fancy gowns and, sometimes, disguised as a fortuneteller, Warne gained the confidences of wives of businessmen and politicians. In 1860, Pinkerton learned of a rumored plot to assassinate President-elect Lincoln in Baltimore, en route from Illinois to his inauguration in Washington. Pinkerton assigned Warne an important role in thwarting the assassination. She infiltrated a Baltimore group called the Golden Circle, confirming the plot. While Pinkerton informed the president, Kate warned one of Lincoln’s confidants. Van Steenwyk succinctly details the elaborate counterplan, in which Lincoln altered his multicity itinerary and even donned a disguise himself to throw off the hunt. Warne rose at Pinkerton, directing both male and female detectives and heading the agency’s Washington office during the Civil War. In contrast to crisp text, Belloni’s stylized illustrations are a digital miasma of cartoon colors, layered textures, and Disney-fied features and gowns. Eyes, especially, are large, dilated, and kittenish.
Sadly, Van Steenwyk’s affirming narrative and important subject are matched with out-of-sync art. (note, bibliography) (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8075-4117-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
The book has its heart in the right place, but its mind is too clearly focused on adult agendas and preoccupations.
Barnes’ earnest, rather oblique text interrogating the use of colors as labels for people is at odds with its playful, naive collage art.
The clunky opening line reads, “I’m just a kid coloring the world in the pictures I drew. I look in my crayon box to see which one I’d be…I wonder if kids are colors too,” propelling readers into a lengthy rumination on whether elements of the natural world “see” a child as a color. “Am I a color to the sky? Am I a color in my dreams? Am I a color to the moon? Am I a color to the sea?” The ideological slant declares color an inadequate and limiting description or category for a human being. While a laudable message, it seems a rather abstract one for the intended child audience, though Nelson’s accompanying, playful and, yes, colorful, collage illustrations seem much more in tune with young children’s sensibilities. This title doesn’t measure up to other more developmentally appropriate titles prompting discussion about race, ethnicity and diversity. Let's Talk about Race, by Julius Lester and illustrated by Karen Barbour (2005), and The Skin You Live in, by Michael Tyler and illustrated by David Lee Csicsko (2005), are just two of these.
The book has its heart in the right place, but its mind is too clearly focused on adult agendas and preoccupations. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-58536-541-8
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In enjoying the art, readers will pick up some bits of history along the way.
Kalman’s narrator sees a man who reminds her of Abraham Lincoln and goes to the library to find out more about the 16th president in this appealingly childlike introduction.
She finds information about Lincoln’s family life, his education, how he dressed, his presidency and his death. She wonders what he thought about, and she offers information about his anti-slavery views and his meetings with Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass. Kalman’s artwork is the main attraction here, with appealing naive illustrations done in gouache. Each page offers visual treats in a Matisse-like palette, unusual for a biography of a president, but fun in their own right—images of various people and items related to the president, including pancakes, a vanilla cake, a whistle, apples and, toward the end, an ominous-looking gun facing a rocking chair with a top hat on the floor. In the compression necessary to the picture-book form, however, history is regrettably oversimplified. Lincoln did indeed hate slavery and did say, as the narrator states, “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong,” But to assert that “[t]he Northern states (the Union) believed that slavery should be abolished. And so they went to war,” is to offer children a not-quite-accurate version of history adults should be ready to contextualize.
In enjoying the art, readers will pick up some bits of history along the way. (notes, sources) (Picture book/biography. 5-8)Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-24039-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2011
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