How the future first lady overcame her fears.
A misleading subtitle isn’t all that afflicts this profile—which, rather than highlight Roosevelt’s “kindness,” points to an early experience of being tossed off a damaged ocean liner into a lifeboat as the origin of deep anxiety issues and goes on, in the wake of the deaths of her parents and brother, to trace the blossoming of her self-confidence under the tutelage of Marie Souvestre, headmistress at a British boarding school, and her initial involvement in social causes. The author ends with Eleanor’s first chance encounter with Franklin but expands on her career and legacy in an afterword. There’s a condescending tone toward others in parts of Becker’s narrative (“As she approached the settlement house for the first time, a wave of terror threatened to engulf her. What poverty!”) that is reinforced by a later quote from Roosevelt about how “the underdog was always the one to be championed.” People don’t remain quite so anonymous in Lewis’ pale, understated illustrations, though people in group settings do have generic features; in a capping final scene, there are brown individuals among the White ones. Eleanor Roosevelt is hard to top as a role model, but readers will get a more robust sense of her character from Barbara Kerley’s Eleanor Makes Her Mark (2020), illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Respectful (to its subject at least) but a staid, distant picture. (references and further resources) (Picture-book biography. 7-9)Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2023
ISBN: 9780316316415
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
Categories: CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
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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
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Punctuated—unsurprisingly—by explosions, an account of the groundbreaking rocketeer’s childhood and first experiments.
Fueled by an early interest in hands-on science nurtured by his parents and sparked by reading The War of the Worlds, Goddard’s ambition to “build something that would soar to space” led to years of experimentation and failure analysis. Finally, in 1926, a brief but successful flight pointed the way to “every shuttle that has blasted into space, every astronaut who has defied gravity, and every man who has walked on the moon.” Fulton occasionally skimps on scientific details (in one childhood trial Robert “emptied a small vial of hydrogen into a pan”; even in the backmatter, there’s no explanation why, as he notes in his journal, “Hydrogen and oxygen when combined near a flame will ignite”). Still, she highlights the profound curiosity and determined, methodical effort that ultimately earned her subject a well-deserved place in the pantheon of scientists and inventors. Scientific gear in Funck’s cartoon illustrations often looks generic, and in one scene he depicts a rocket that is markedly different from the one described in the adjacent narrative. Moreover, his explosions look like fried eggs, and most come with oddly undersized if all-capped onomatopoeia (“BOOM!”; “POP!”) that underplays both the melodramatic potential and the real danger to which Goddard must have exposed himself. Goddard and his family are white.
Disappointingly lackadaisical. (afterword, list of sources) (Picture book/biography. 7-9)Pub Date: July 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4814-6098-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
Categories: CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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