by Janet Nolan & illustrated by Marie Lafrance ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 25, 2010
At 109 years old and still burning (and in the Guinness Book of World Records), a real light bulb hanging in a California firehouse not only merits admiration for its durability but also provides a natural anchor for a look at how a small settlement grows over a century into a city. Nolan takes it decade by decade as, in Lafrance’s folk art–style acrylics, ever-larger buildings go up around one fire house after another, a hand-pulled hose cart gives way to a succession of fire trucks and the professional firefighters who succeed volunteer companies put out fires, perform rescues and march in parades. Beneath the bulb they welcome generations of marveling visitors in changing period dress. Unlike Juliette Goodrich’s Little Light Shines Bright, illustrated by Roseanne Lester (2008), there’s but one actual photo, but the little-town-over-time theme—and the fire trucks—exert plenty of child-friendly appeal. The bulb has its own website and webcam. (afterword) (Informational picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: May 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-58246-298-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tricycle
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2010
Categories: CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION
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by Doreen Rappaport ; illustrated by Matt Faulkner ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 2016
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. 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
Categories: CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION
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by Patricia Engel ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 2, 2021
A 15-year-old girl in Colombia, doing time in a remote detention center, orchestrates a jail break and tries to get home.
"People say drugs and alcohol are the greatest and most persuasive narcotics—the elements most likely to ruin a life. They're wrong. It's love." As the U.S. recovers from the repeal of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, from the misery of separations on the border, from both the idea and the reality of a wall around the United States, Engel's vital story of a divided Colombian family is a book we need to read. Weaving Andean myth and natural symbolism into her narrative—condors signify mating for life, jaguars revenge; the embattled Colombians are "a singed species of birds without feathers who can still fly"; children born in one country and raised in another are "repotted flowers, creatures forced to live in the wrong habitat"—she follows Talia, the youngest child, on a complex journey. Having committed a violent crime not long before she was scheduled to leave her father in Bogotá to join her mother and siblings in New Jersey, she winds up in a horrible Catholic juvie from which she must escape in order to make her plane. Hence the book's wonderful first sentence: "It was her idea to tie up the nun." Talia's cross-country journey is interwoven with the story of her parents' early romance, their migration to the United States, her father's deportation, her grandmother's death, the struggle to reunite. In the latter third of the book, surprising narrative shifts are made to include the voices of Talia's siblings, raised in the U.S. This provides interesting new perspectives, but it is a little awkward to break the fourth wall so late in the book. Attention, TV and movie people: This story is made for the screen.
The rare immigrant chronicle that is as long on hope as it is on heartbreak.Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982159-46-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP
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SEEN & HEARD
by Staton Rabin & illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2008
Not much is heard about President Lincoln’s children, so Rabin fills a gap with this brief snapshot into the lives of two of them, Tad and Willie, which Ibatoulline illustrates with a softly drenched light that suggests yesteryear and a hint of melancholy, his images often evoking hand-tinted daguerreotypes. Working from historical documents, then embellishing to give the story a narrative, Rabin pleasingly draws two little rascals, full of practical jokes and absolute entitlement to their father’s attention, which the old stoic gives with imperturbable, beatific grace (while his aides bite their tongues). When the boys have second thoughts after condemning a toy soldier to death, they go to their father for a pardon; Abe consents with a wry “it makes me feel rested after a hard day’s work, to find some good excuse to save a man’s life.” An author’s note explains the genesis of the story and fleshes out the principals, including Tad and Willie, who, like their father, lived too-brief lives. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-670-06169-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
Categories: CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION
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