Timely recognition for a small group of unsung civil rights heroes.
The inspiring story of a lesser-known sit-in that led to the desegregation of a town’s library.
The real surprise here is not that this local protest took decades to achieve its goal, but that it occurred in 1939—well before the Civil Rights Movement really got rolling. Deftly capturing their tale’s real, if low-key, drama, the co-authors describe how, on the day that a new, whites-only library opened in Alexandria, Virginia, five Black men who had been recruited and trained in nonviolent behavior by African American lawyer Wilbert Tucker applied unsuccessfully for cards, then quietly sat down to read. “Oh, mercy, Miss Scoggins,” wails a library aide. “There’s colored people all over the library!” Notwithstanding a judge’s order in the ensuing series of trials, rather than grant access to all, the town built what the authors dub a “‘separate-but-equal’ so-called library” that remained in service through another 20 years of protests and lawsuits. And it wasn’t until 2019 that the charges against the strikers were finally (and posthumously) dropped. In Holt’s painted scenes, hostile library patrons and police hovering over anxious protesters give way to courtroom crowds listening to the serious-looking Tucker present his case, later marchers singing and bearing signs, and finally a set of modern brown-skinned youngsters surrounded by bookshelves in an open, welcoming space; readers will come away realizing that change takes time but that justice is always worth fighting for.
Timely recognition for a small group of unsung civil rights heroes. (afterword) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781954354333
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Creston
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2026
Sad indeed, but a little bland—though less traumatic in the telling than the stories of Jumbo or the Faithful Elephants...
In this true tale of an elephant that crushed a keeper after peacefully giving zoo visitors rides for nearly 40 years, Fenton tones the drama down to near nonexistence (for better or worse).
Arriving at the Melbourne Zoo as a youngster, Queenie began giving rides in 1905. She became such a fixture that children wrote her letters, her birthday was celebrated each year, and she even marched in the Centenary Floral Parade in 1934. After creating an endearing but not anthropomorphic portrait of her pachyderm protagonist, the author, warning that “Queenie’s story has a sad ending,” goes on to explain that even though the 1944 killing might have been just an accident, “the gentle Indian elephant was put to sleep.” Furthermore, she was never replaced; the elephants in today’s zoo occupy a habitat where they can “do just what elephants like to do.” Neither the incident itself nor Queenie’s end are specifically described or depicted, and Gouldthorpe’s illustrations, which look like old, hand-tinted photographs, put a nostalgic distance between viewers and events.
Sad indeed, but a little bland—though less traumatic in the telling than the stories of Jumbo or the Faithful Elephants (1988) killed at the Tokyo Zoo. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: June 11, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6375-9
Page Count: 25
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
Solid, if not revolutionary.
Albee and Ko take their shot at an early-reader biography about Alexander Hamilton.
Emergent readers (and their caregivers) familiar with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hit musical Hamilton will be rewarded with what amounts to an illustrated highlights reel of the founding father’s life. Albee opens in medias res by describing Hamilton as “a soldier, a lawyer, and a financial wizard,” before the spare text quickly brings readers to Hamilton’s Caribbean childhood, noting his father’s abandonment, his mother’s death, and his determined rise from poverty. He’s presented as a trusted adviser to George Washington and rival to Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, with Ko’s accompanying digital art depicting him with a smiling man on horseback (Washington), while on the facing page, the two other men scowl. A later spread notes major differences between Jefferson and Hamilton, including acknowledgment that Jefferson enslaved people while “Hamilton was against slavery,” but Washington’s slave-owner status isn’t named, nor is the American Revolution’s impact on Indigenous peoples. Personal milestones, such as marriage to Eliza Schuyler, are noted alongside references to his involvement in the war and his work with the nascent American government. While his death occurs on the page, strategies to keep the text within the comprehension of its audience risk undermining other historical content by omitting such terms as “revolution” and the Federalist Papers (though they do appear in backmatter).
Solid, if not revolutionary. (Early reader/biography. 6-8)Pub Date: May 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-243291-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
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