A superb snapshot of an adventurer.
Pizzoli resurrects an early-20th-century mystery in this riveting portrait of Percy Fawcett, a renowned British explorer who vanished during an ill-fated hunt for a “lost” city.
Shortly following an early life of military service to the British Empire, Fawcett dived deep into a career of adventuring. He trained for a year with the Royal Geographical Society, a prominent research center based in London, before the organization began to send him out on expeditions into South America between the years of 1906 and 1924. Pizzoli devotes the first half of Fawcett’s tale to building the latter’s legend, expertly drawing from Fawcett’s thrilling brushes with wildlife and local populations to bring to life the formidable explorer. (An encounter involving a giant anaconda is presented via minimalist illustrations both terrifying and brilliant in scope.) Throughout his various research excursions, Fawcett heard tales of a mythical city deep in the Amazon rain forest. Naming the city “Z,” Fawcett soon embarked on what turned out to be his final known expedition, and his subsequent disappearance went on to capture the public’s imagination. As in the author’s previous gem (Tricky Vic, 2015), the strikingly matte, mixed-media pictures ooze personality and perfectly complement the succinct text and informational sidebars. Predictably, Fawcett’s story features a cast of light-skinned characters, with a few brown-skinned individuals included to represent the invisible local populations; his failure to “conquer” in the end represents a fascinating twist on the usual narrative of imperialism.
A superb snapshot of an adventurer. (author’s note, appendix, glossary, selected sources) (Picture book/biography. 7-12)Pub Date: June 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-670-01653-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
PROFILES
A pivotal moment in a child’s life, at once stirring and authentically personal.
Before growing up to become a major figure in the civil rights movement, a boy finds a role model.
Buffing up a childhood tale told by her renowned father, Young Shelton describes how young Andrew saw scary men marching in his New Orleans neighborhood (“It sounded like they were yelling ‘Hi, Hitler!’ ”). In response to his questions, his father took him to see a newsreel of Jesse Owens (“a runner who looked like me”) triumphing in the 1936 Olympics. “Racism is a sickness,” his father tells him. “We’ve got to help folks like that.” How? “Well, you can start by just being the best person you can be,” his father replies. “It’s what you do that counts.” In James’ hazy chalk pastels, Andrew joins racially diverse playmates (including a White child with an Irish accent proudly displaying the nickel he got from his aunt as a bribe to stop playing with “those Colored boys”) in tag and other games, playing catch with his dad, sitting in the midst of a cheering crowd in the local theater’s segregated balcony, and finally visualizing himself pelting down a track alongside his new hero—“head up, back straight, eyes focused,” as a thematically repeated line has it, on the finish line. An afterword by Young Shelton explains that she retold this story, told to her many times growing up, drawing from conversations with Young and from her own research; family photos are also included. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A pivotal moment in a child’s life, at once stirring and authentically personal. (illustrator’s note) (Autobiographical picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-545-55465-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care.
In 1977, the oil carrier Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil into a formerly pristine Alaskan ocean inlet, killing millions of birds, animals, and fish. Despite a cleanup, crude oil is still there.
The Winters foretold the destructive powers of the atomic bomb allusively in The Secret Project (2017), leaving the actuality to the backmatter. They make no such accommodations to young audiences in this disturbing book. From the dark front cover, on which oily blobs conceal a seabird, to the rescuer’s sad face on the back, the mother-son team emphasizes the disaster. A relatively easy-to-read and poetically heightened text introduces the situation. Oil is pumped from the Earth “all day long, all night long, / day after day, year after year” in “what had been unspoiled land, home to Native people // and thousands of caribou.” The scale of extraction is huge: There’s “a giant pipeline” leading to “enormous ships.” Then, crash. Rivers of oil gush out over three full-bleed wordless pages. Subsequent scenes show rocks, seabirds, and sea otters covered with oil. Finally, 30 years later, animals have returned to a cheerful scene. “But if you lift a rock… // oil / seeps / up.” For an adult reader, this is heartbreaking. How much more difficult might this be for an animal-loving child?
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care. (author’s note, further reading) (Informational picture book. 9-12)Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3077-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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