A well-written tribute to a deserving champion of science.
A thorough biography of early African American scientist Charles Henry Turner.
From a young age, “questions hopped through…Turner’s mind like grasshoppers.” His teacher encouraged him to “go and find out,” and that is what he spent his life doing. He attended college when most colleges didn’t accept African Americans, and he kept asking questions as he studied biology. The “indefatigable scientist” studied spiders: Two spreads explain how he learned that “each spider wove a web just right for its home.” He studied crustaceans and ants, bees and moths. His significant findings are explained both in the illustrations and in the lucid paragraphs of text that describe the experiments and his conclusions. The importance of his findings in the field is made clear, and the curiosity and hard work that led to them are the focus. One spread mentions the racial prejudice he lived through and his service to the community. His work is cast in the light of uplifting humanity: “He wrote that biology could help people see the connections among all living things.” The digital illustrations depict people, creatures, and experiments in thick black lines and swaths of color that help readers understand the science being discussed. This extensively researched, jam-packed text intrigues and inspires with Turner’s example of discovery and hard-won, meaningful contributions to knowledge about life.
A well-written tribute to a deserving champion of science. (author’s note, timeline, sources, notes) (Picture book/biography. 7-10)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-62979-558-4
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Calkins Creek/Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
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Inspiring fare for readers who, as the author puts it, dream of becoming “brave astronauts,” “great artists,” or both.
A portrait of Alan Bean, the fourth man to walk on the moon and the first to express what that felt like in paint.
Basing his account at least in part on personal interviews with Bean, who tellingly described himself as “an artist who was once an astronaut,” Robbins (who also wrote about our nearest neighbor in Margaret and the Moon, illustrated by Lucy Knisley, 2017) spins a glowing tribute that focuses more on his white subject’s artistic aspirations than his outstanding Navy and NASA careers. Having found after his Apollo mission and subsequent experiences in space that “words weren’t enough” and photographs likewise failed to capture the “wonder of walking on a new world,” Bean turned to a medium that allowed him to experiment with light, color, and even materials—some of his work includes actual moon dust, spacesuit boot prints, and marks created by astronautical tools. Rubin’s cover and internal views of an easel actually set up on the lunar surface are fanciful, but along with scenes from Bean’s youth and short but electrifying time on the moon, he incorporates versions of some of Bean’s space paintings into glimpses of the artist’s studio and a gallery exhibition (where some younger viewers are people of color). Further examples are paired in the backmatter to the actual photos that inspired them.
Inspiring fare for readers who, as the author puts it, dream of becoming “brave astronauts,” “great artists,” or both. (timeline, bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 7-10)Pub Date: May 28, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-25953-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A heady mix of visual and verbal inspiration, nearly every page rewarding slow, thoughtful attention.
In tribute to the work of the American Civil Liberties Union, 16 illustrators offer art for and commentary on pithy statements on human rights that have particularly moved them.
Some of the contributors—notably Sean Qualls for Maya Angelou’s “Still I rise” and Greg Pizzoli for a line from W.E.B. Dubois about the cowardice of those who “dare not know”—have made their chosen quotation a central visual component of the art. Some offer conventional views of people of color on the march (Innosanto Nagara, for a quote from Khalil Gibran) or idyllic scenes of giving and cooperation (Alina Chau, Molly Idle). Others opt for more oblique, often provocative responses. Brian Pinkney, for instance, illustrates Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that” with a racially diverse crowd of smiling faces over an equally diverse crowd of scowling ones; for Dolores Huerta’s reminder that we are all one human race, Raúl the Third depicts a mother and child hugging each other through a tall fence of slats; a collage based on the American flag by Melissa Sweet features phrases from the Constitution and other significant documents in the white stripes and in place of stars, a defiant McCarthy-era manifesto from E.B. White. As further food for thought, the artists all add personal reflections, some relatively lengthy, about what their chosen passage means to them.
A heady mix of visual and verbal inspiration, nearly every page rewarding slow, thoughtful attention. (illustrator bios) (Picture book. 7-10)Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4521-7039-8
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
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