Ten compelling episodes in the voting rights story—a still-unfinished fight.
Branching out into mini-biography, the 5-Minute series introduces voting rights.
Though readers can browse this work, the various entries make more sense read in chronological order, since many efforts built on (or departed from) earlier pioneers’ work. Roberts describes Susan B. Anthony’s arrest for illegally voting in 1872, Lucy Stone’s decision to keep her own name after marriage, and how Alice Paul disrupted a mayoral banquet in London to draw attention to the cause. The author also considers the experiences of women of color, noting that Sojourner Truth and Ida B. Wells endured both misogyny and racism as they fought for the right to vote. Roberts spotlights Ojibwe lawyer Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin, who wanted to make the public aware of Indigenous peoples’ longtime support for women's suffrage. Each well-crafted story is capped by an additional page of context—for instance, the difference between the terms suffragist and suffragette. Roberts briefly describes the methods used by various groups and notes past disagreement over whether violent protest was acceptable. Lively, watercolorlike vignette illustrations accurately depict the settings. A useful appended timeline begins in 1832 (with Mary Smith becoming the first woman to officially request the right to vote in the U.K.) and ends with the 2013 U.S. Supreme Court Voting Rights Act decision that “opened the door to potential barriers that could make it harder for some groups to vote.”
Ten compelling episodes in the voting rights story—a still-unfinished fight. (Nonfiction. 6-9)Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781454961673
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40.
From two Nobel Peace Prize winners, an invitation to look past sadness and loneliness to the joy that surrounds us.
Bobbing in the wake of 2016’s heavyweight Book of Joy (2016), this brief but buoyant address to young readers offers an earnest insight: “If you just focus on the thing that is making / you sad, then the sadness is all you see. / But if you look around, you will / see that joy is everywhere.” López expands the simply delivered proposal in fresh and lyrical ways—beginning with paired scenes of the authors as solitary children growing up in very different circumstances on (as they put it) “opposite sides of the world,” then meeting as young friends bonded by streams of rainbow bunting and going on to share their exuberantly hued joy with a group of dancers diverse in terms of age, race, culture, and locale while urging readers to do the same. Though on the whole this comes off as a bit bland (the banter and hilarity that characterized the authors’ recorded interchanges are absent here) and their advice just to look away from the sad things may seem facile in view of what too many children are inescapably faced with, still, it’s hard to imagine anyone in the world more qualified to deliver such a message than these two. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-48423-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses.
An NBA star pays tribute to the influence of his grandfather.
In the same vein as his Long Shot (2009), illustrated by Frank Morrison, this latest from Paul prioritizes values and character: “My granddad Papa Chilly had dreams that came true,” he writes, “so maybe if I listen and watch him, / mine will too.” So it is that the wide-eyed Black child in the simply drawn illustrations rises early to get to the playground hoops before anyone else, watches his elder working hard and respecting others, hears him cheering along with the rest of the family from the stands during games, and recalls in a prose afterword that his grandfather wasn’t one to lecture but taught by example. Paul mentions in both the text and the backmatter that Papa Chilly was the first African American to own a service station in North Carolina (his presumed dream) but not that he was killed in a robbery, which has the effect of keeping the overall tone positive and the instructional content one-dimensional. Figures in the pictures are mostly dark-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-250-81003-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
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