Nobel Peace Prize–winner Wangari Maathai’s work to reverse the deforestation of Kenya garners Winter’s signature treatment: a spare, reverential text and stylized, reductionist paintings. The present-tense narration posits Wangari’s thoughts and inserts unattributed quotations: “Will all of Kenya become a desert? she wonders as her tears fall.” “The government men laugh. ‘Women can’t do this,’ they say.” Wangari is imprisoned for her actions, but while she is textually and visually depicted in jail and then on the next spread free within the treed landscape, the text makes no mention of her release. Possibly most egregious in this day and age is the image of Wangari standing within an undifferentiated Africa while to the north, Europe is depicted with rudimentary national boundaries. While the effort of producing an intelligible picture-book biography for young children inevitably involves the selection of just a small number of details, this sere distillation is arguably more inspiring story than biography. For a contrast in depth and documentation, see Claire A. Nivola’s recent Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai (2008). (author’s note) (Picture book/biography. 4-7)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-15-206545-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
So joyous is most of this tale from Wallace that it all but subverts the act of magic serving as the climax. Scarlette Beane is a born gardener, not just with a green thumb, but with green fingers as well. She lives in a small home with her parents, “so they worked outside as much as they could.” They are also avid gardeners, too; the days are clear and they are a supremely merry lot. Scarlette is given a garden when she turns five, and proceeds to grow colossal vegetables that have to be individually harvested with machines. Everyone in the village comes to help, and then to eat the soup made from the bounty. They must eat outside because the house is too small, but no one minds such a glorious picnic, even when it rains. That night, Scarlette creeps out of bed to a high meadow and plants a bunch of seeds in a hole. The next day, a castle of vegetables rises from the meadow: “Mrs. Beane kissed her daughter’s face. ‘I knew you’d do something wonderful,’ she whispered.” Since their small house has suited them so beautifully, this ending has the feel of gilding the lily. Thickly painted, expressively modeled artwork adds to the atmosphere of green and growing miracles. (Picture book. 3-7)
Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-8037-2475-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
Hints of playfulness are squashed beneath the message in this trite consciousness-raiser. Two lads comment on the litter they see while wandering city streets: “ ‘People throw garbage out their windows,’ ” says one as a toilet comes crashing down, “ ‘They throw it out of cars. And someday the cars themselves will be garbage.’ ” The two stand, finally, contemplating a sea of garbage bags and castoffs—until one spots a flower amidst the trash. “ ‘We need less garbage and more flowers . . . It’s up to us.’ ” Testa’s crisp, simple style (A Long Trip To Z, 1997, etc.) is not well-suited to depicting litter; even the rusting hulks in his overstuffed junkscapes have a clean, tidy look, and trash is so neatly drawn that it hardly looks used. This may make a good discussion-starter, especially with younger children, but such calls to action as Christopher Cheng’s One Child (1999) or Loreen Leedy’s Great Trash Bash (1991) convey the problem, and possible responses to it, in more urgent, convincing ways. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7358-1451-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: NorthSouth
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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