A timely story of refugees and the strength of individuality over conformity.
For political refugees, bringing something from the old country, even something as simple as color, is a way of remembering and retaining roots.
An 8-year-old child narrates the story of a family’s midnight flight from their home to a new land with a new language and schools. The buildings are gray boxes, and all the children wear monotone orange, green, or gray sweaters that are knit in one pattern. The mother, beset by the sameness, has a solution. She unravels the wool and mixes up the colors and stitches, knitting different and eye-catching designs. The small fashion statement catches on in the neighborhood, and soon knitting needles are busily clicking away at new sweaters. In her author’s note, Cristina explains that she has based this story on a Portuguese family’s 1960s flight from dictatorship to Communist European countries, where, unfortunately, they did not find freedom. While not as harrowing as many contemporary stories, this timely title gently introduces the trauma of exile to young readers and can lead to discussions and, hopefully, a better understanding of being uprooted. Kono’s graphic designs on pale gray paper artfully capture the drabness of the new city and the varied patterns of the sweaters. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is included.
A timely story of refugees and the strength of individuality over conformity. (foreword, maps) (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-59270-220-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Enchanted Lion Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
This reimagined telling has an engaging charm that rings true.
An imagining of an unlikely real-life episode in the life of absurdist Franz Kafka.
Theule follows the outline of the account: When Kafka meets an unhappy girl in a Berlin park in 1923 and learns her doll is lost, Kafka writes a series of letters from Soupsy, the doll, to Irma, the girl. The real letters and the girl’s identity have been lost to history; the invented letters describe a dazzling variety of adventures for Soupsy. Unfortunately, as the letters increase in excitement, Kafka’s health declines (he would die of tuberculosis in June 1924), and he must find a way to end Soupsy’s adventures in a positive way. In an author’s note, readers learn that Kafka chose to write that Soupsy was getting married. Theule instead opts to send the doll on an Antarctic expedition. Irma gets the message that she can do anything, and the final image shows her riding a camel, a copy of Metamorphosis peeking from a satchel. While kids may not care about Kafka, the short relationship between the writer and the little girl will keep their interest. Realizing that an adult can care so much about a child met in the park is empowering. The stylized illustrations, especially those set in the chilly Berlin fall, resemble woodcuts with a German expressionist look. The doll’s adventures look a little sweeter, with more red and blue added to the brown palette of the German scenes. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10.5-by-17-inch double-page spreads viewed at 23% of actual size.)
This reimagined telling has an engaging charm that rings true. (biographical note, bibliography) (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-11632-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
Rappaport makes this long struggle palpable and relevant, while Faulkner adds a winning mix of gravitas and high spirits.
Rappaport examines the salient successes and raw setbacks along the 144-year-long road between the nation’s birth and women’s suffrage.
This lively yet forthright narrative pivots on a reality that should startle modern kids: women’s right to vote was only achieved in 1920, 72 years after Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York. Indeed, time’s passage figures as a textual motif, connecting across decades such determined women as Stanton, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucy Stone. They spoke tirelessly, marched, organized, and got arrested. Rappaport includes events such as 1913’s Women’s Suffrage Parade in Washington, D.C., but doesn’t shy from divisive periods like the Civil War. Faulkner’s meticulously researched gouache-and-ink illustrations often infuse scenes with humor by playing with size and perspective. As Stanton and Lucretia Mott sail into London in 1840 for the World Anti-Slavery Conference, Faulkner depicts the two women as giants on the ship’s upper deck. On the opposite page, as they learn they’ll be barred as delegates, they’re painted in miniature, dwarfed yet unflappable beneath a gallery full of disapproving men. A final double-page spread mingles such modern stars as Shirley Chisholm and Sonia Sotomayor amid the historical leaders.
Rappaport makes this long struggle palpable and relevant, while Faulkner adds a winning mix of gravitas and high spirits. (biographical thumbnails, chronology, sources, websites, further reading, author’s note) (Picture book/biography. 6-8)Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7868-5142-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
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