Quiet in tone, electrifying in content.
A look at the NBA’s first athlete of color.
Even kindergartners know who Jackie Robinson was, but Wataru “Wat” Misaka’s achievements are far more undersung. Growing up in Utah, and so able to avoid the incarceration that so many of his fellow Japanese Americans suffered in World War II (if not racist jeers and feelings of guilt that he was spared), Misaka led his college basketball team to two national championships, with a period of postwar military service in between where he was stationed in Hiroshima. Drafted by the New York Knicks in 1947, he played in just three games before being cut for reasons that were never explained; he went on to obtain a degree in mechanical engineering and raise a family. Inserting indignant words like unfair and unthinkable over a contrastingly dispassionate narrative, Diep tells his tale so sparely that she doesn’t even mention when he died (2019) but also leaves the distinct impression that much of his story remains untold. Giddings’ painted scenes of button-eyed figures standing in static poses or striding across spacious courts are likewise low-key, even in a final celebratory view of the white-haired groundbreaker looking on as a racially diverse set of young ballers applaud. Readers will come away appreciating his achievements and, just maybe, wondering why they’ve never heard of him before.
Quiet in tone, electrifying in content. (author’s note) (Picture-book biography. 6-8)Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9781637274774
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Triumph Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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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