Readers will want to pore over this thoroughly engaging volume.
From poor, blond boy to the King of Rock ’n’ Roll, Elvis Presley lived the classic rags-to-riches storybook life.
According to Winter’s heightened, poetic narrative, “singing is the reason / Elvis was brought into this world” and became the means by which he transcended his impoverished beginnings. He grew up singing in church, at the county fair, in the classroom with the guitar his mama had bought him, and, after the family moved to Memphis, in the high school talent show. Dyeing his hair black and donning colorful outfits from secondhand stores, Elvis developed a “LOOK AT ME” persona and dreamed of becoming “the biggest star in the world.” Stylized, information-packed narration broken into single-page “chapters” provides the platform for Red Nose Studio’s (aka Chris Sickels) eye-grabbing art. Information included inside the book jacket shows how he builds small, theaterlike sets from cardboard, wire, fabric, and found objects and characters’ heads out of polymer clay, then photographs them from various perspectives—from feet under a table in a diner to Elvis and his girlfriend sitting on a neon sign above the city. Illustrations reflect Elvis’ segregated South, the white boy’s African-American influences confined to one image of a black church and another of bluesmen on Beale Street. This story is all about his rise; the decline and ignominious end are omitted, even in the author’s note.
Readers will want to pore over this thoroughly engaging volume. (Picture book/biography. 5-10)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-55470-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses.
An NBA star pays tribute to the influence of his grandfather.
In the same vein as his Long Shot (2009), illustrated by Frank Morrison, this latest from Paul prioritizes values and character: “My granddad Papa Chilly had dreams that came true,” he writes, “so maybe if I listen and watch him, / mine will too.” So it is that the wide-eyed Black child in the simply drawn illustrations rises early to get to the playground hoops before anyone else, watches his elder working hard and respecting others, hears him cheering along with the rest of the family from the stands during games, and recalls in a prose afterword that his grandfather wasn’t one to lecture but taught by example. Paul mentions in both the text and the backmatter that Papa Chilly was the first African American to own a service station in North Carolina (his presumed dream) but not that he was killed in a robbery, which has the effect of keeping the overall tone positive and the instructional content one-dimensional. Figures in the pictures are mostly dark-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-250-81003-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
A picture book more than worthy of sharing the shelf with Alan Schroeder and Jerry Pinkney’s Minty (1996) and Carole Boston...
A memorable, lyrical reverse-chronological walk through the life of an American icon.
In free verse, Cline-Ransome narrates the life of Harriet Tubman, starting and ending with a train ride Tubman takes as an old woman. “But before wrinkles formed / and her eyes failed,” Tubman could walk tirelessly under a starlit sky. Cline-Ransome then describes the array of roles Tubman played throughout her life, including suffragist, abolitionist, Union spy, and conductor on the Underground Railroad. By framing the story around a literal train ride, the Ransomes juxtapose the privilege of traveling by rail against Harriet’s earlier modes of travel, when she repeatedly ran for her life. Racism still abounds, however, for she rides in a segregated train. While the text introduces readers to the details of Tubman’s life, Ransome’s use of watercolor—such a striking departure from his oil illustrations in many of his other picture books—reveals Tubman’s humanity, determination, drive, and hope. Ransome’s lavishly detailed and expansive double-page spreads situate young readers in each time and place as the text takes them further into the past.
A picture book more than worthy of sharing the shelf with Alan Schroeder and Jerry Pinkney’s Minty (1996) and Carole Boston Weatherford and Kadir Nelson’s Moses (2006). (Picture book/biography. 5-8)Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2047-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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