SAINT ANTHONY THE GREAT

Name: SAINT ANTHONY THE GREAT
Author: John Chryssavgis
ISBN: 978-1-937786-46-5

by John Chryssavgis & Marilyn Rouvelas ; illustrated by Isabelle Brent ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 7, 2015

While not destined to have wide appeal, the book tells the story of a saint deeply important in both the Roman Catholic and...

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A brief introduction to the early Christian mystic and saint.

Anthony lived in the third and fourth centuries C.E., in Egypt. Both his extremely ascetic life and his role as the father of monasticism are described in ways that make them accessible to young children. When Anthony’s parents die, leaving him with the care of his younger sister, he sells everything he owns, provides for his sister’s care, and “sets out with nothing to find something.” He is assailed by “wrong thoughts” and temptations, described as coming from the devil. But he turns to God and continues to repel the devil. He settles in an old fort, alone, where his friends bring him food, and people move near the fort to hear Anthony speak. His message is that wrong thoughts come to everyone, but they can be overcome by “right thoughts” (“like being patient and caring for his friends”) that bring one nearer to God. Later, he moves even further into the desert, living to 105. Throughout, he lives consciously, rejecting wrong thoughts and cultivating right ones. The pictures use many Egyptian, Persian, and Middle Eastern patterns and motifs, and Anthony’s age is tracked by the length of his beard.

While not destined to have wide appeal, the book tells the story of a saint deeply important in both the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox traditions, filling a critical niche. (appendix, timeline, further reading, map, glossary) (Picture book/biography. 5-8)

Pub Date: Dec. 7, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-937786-46-5

Page Count: 28

Publisher: Wisdom Tales

Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015

Categories:

CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CHILDREN'S RELIGION

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LONG, TALL LINCOLN

by Jennifer Dussling ; illustrated by Chin Ko ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 20, 2017

A succinct, edifying read, but don’t buy it for the pictures.

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Abraham Lincoln’s ascent to the presidency is recounted in a fluid, easy-to-read biography for early readers.

Simple, direct sentences stress Lincoln’s humble upbringing, his honesty, and his devotion to acting with moral conviction. “Lincoln didn’t seem like a man who would be president one day. But he studied hard and became a lawyer. He cared about people and about justice.” Slavery and Lincoln’s signature achievement of emancipation are explained in broad yet defined, understandable analogies. “At that time, in the South, the law let white people own black people, just as they owned a house or a horse.” Readers are clearly given the president’s perspective through some documented memorable quotes from his own letters. “Lincoln did not like slavery. ‘If slavery is not wrong,’ he wrote to a friend ‘nothing is wrong.’ ” (The text does not clarify that this letter was written in 1865 and not before he ascended to the presidency, as implied by the book.) As the war goes on and Lincoln makes his decision to free the slaves in the “Southern states”—“a bold move”—Lincoln’s own words describe his thinking: “ ‘If my name ever goes into history,’ Lincoln said, ‘it will be for this act.’ ” A very basic timeline, which mentions the assassination unaddressed in the text, is followed by backmatter providing photographs, slightly more detailed historical information, and legacy. It’s a pity that the text is accompanied by unremarkable, rudimentary opaque paintings.

A succinct, edifying read, but don’t buy it for the pictures. (Informational early reader. 6-8)

Pub Date: June 20, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-06-243256-8

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: March 5, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017

Categories:

CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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MAYA ANGELOU

From the Little People, BIG DREAMS series

by Lisbeth Kaiser ; illustrated by Leire Salaberria translated by Raquel Pitt ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2016

Stirring encouragement for all “little people” with “big dreams.” (Picture book/biography. 5-7)

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“There’s nothing I can’t be,” young Maya thinks, and then shows, in this profile for newly independent readers, imported from Spain.

The inspirational message is conveyed through a fine skein of biographical details. It begins with her birth in St. Louis and the prejudice she experienced growing up in a small Arkansas town and closes with her reading of a poem “about her favorite thing: hope” at Bill Clinton’s presidential inauguration. In between, it mentions the (unspecified) “attack” by her mother’s boyfriend and subsequent elective muteness she experienced as a child, as well as some of the varied pursuits that preceded her eventual decision to become a writer. Kaiser goes on in a closing spread to recap Angelou’s life and career, with dates, beneath a quartet of portrait photos. Salaberria’s simple illustrations, filled with brown-skinned figures, are more idealized than photorealistic, but, though only in the cover image do they make direct contact with readers’, Angelou’s huge eyes are an effective focal point in each scene. The message is similar in the co-published Amelia Earhart, written by Ma Isabel Sánchez Vegara (and also translated by Pitt), but the pictures are more fanciful as illustrator Mariadiamantes endows the aviator with a mane of incandescent orange hair and sends her flying westward (in contradiction of the text and history) on her final around-the-world flight.

Stirring encouragement for all “little people” with “big dreams.” (Picture book/biography. 5-7)