A STEM-winder’s delight, awash in affirmation and the joy of discovery.
Science and fashion meet in this portrait of a 19th-century seamstress whose fascination with ocean life led both to multiple discoveries and to the invention of the glass-sided aquarium.
In the wake of Ocean Speaks (2020), illustrated by Katie Hickey, a profile of pioneering oceanographer Marie Tharp, Keating introduces another woman in marine science who was strong minded enough to torpedo sexist expectations. Folding lyrical touches into her measured account, the author follows Jeanne Villepreux as she learns how to use her hands to “transform a pile of nothing into a beautiful…something” in her parents’ dressmaking shop, then goes on to a successful career making high-society gowns in Paris before a move to Sicily (with “her fabric, her scissors, and her new husband”) sparks a second career studying the wildlife in the nearby shallows. Frustrated by the challenge of getting her specimens to hold still while she draws them, she constructs a waterproof glass box—and so becomes the first to discover that argonauts, a type of octopus, don’t steal their delicate shells from other creatures as was widely supposed but manufacture them, likewise “transforming what appeared to be nothing…into a beautiful something.” Nutter’s appropriately flowing illustrations take their smiling, self-possessed subject from ball gowns and formal dances to sandy beaches and work benches. Villepreux herself is White; montage sequences of colleagues worldwide receiving news of her discoveries feature both White and dark-skinned naturalists, including several other women. An afterword with a timeline fills in further detail about both the inventor and her eight-armed subjects. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A STEM-winder’s delight, awash in affirmation and the joy of discovery. (Picture-book biography. 7-10)Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-30511-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
Andy Warhol once said, “I am a deeply superficial person,” and he sure comes across that way.
Readers can explore just what makes art art with Andy Warhol.
A fictional Andy Warhol discusses career highlights as he introduces readers to the existential question “What is art?” The story unfolds in a nonlinear fashion with loose-lined illustrations of Warhol’s life. Early on the artist asks readers: “What does a real artist look like anyway?” From there, the story veers from career highlight to career highlight, hitting the Campbell’s Soup series, the Marilyn Monroe silkscreens, the Velvet Underground (not mentioned by name), and Interview magazine. Along the way, the fictional Andy challenges readers to consider the paradigms of fame, art, and celebrity. It’s a cool challenge, but it’s also one that may be a little too hip and a little too glib for readers. Like the real Warhol, the book drops names without explanation and then flits on to a different topic as if it’s a little bored with the old one. The short, blasé sentences and questions to readers that assume answers combine into a slightly condescending tone that might be very Warhol but isn’t very engaging in a biography section. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Andy Warhol once said, “I am a deeply superficial person,” and he sure comes across that way. (author's note) (Picture book/biography. 8-10)Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-77715-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
An inspiring and definitely underrecognized role model.
A young Black woman revolutionizes warship design for the U.S. Navy.
Swanson skips most of her subject’s private life to focus on her engineering career, which was inspired by a childhood tour of a WWII submarine in 1943 and culminated in the first naval ship to be entirely designed by computer. Taking to heart her mother’s lesson that she could “learn anything, do anything, and be anything,” Montague defied rules and conventions to take shop in high school, advance from clerk typist for the Navy to ad hoc operator of the early UNIVAC computer, finally earn reluctant admission to the Naval Ship Engineering Center, and head a software-development team so underfunded that she had to recruit her mother and 3-year-old son to ensure that she met her deadline. Montague went on to a long and distinguished career. As she told the author in 2017 (she died in 2018, which goes unmentioned among the closing tally of later honors and awards), she wanted to be remembered for her achievements, not as the first woman, nor the first Black woman, but as the first person to create what she did. As she proceeds from pigtails to gray-haired eminence in Jamison’s illustrations, Montague’s lively, intelligent gaze shines out. Aside from one group portrait of her racially diverse design team, she poses either with other brown-skinned female colleagues or with dismissive, oblivious, and/or astonished white men.
An inspiring and definitely underrecognized role model. (author’s note, source list) (Picture-book biography. 7-9)Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780316565486
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
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