The strength of this telling is the way it encourages readers to empathize with Madison’s plight, making it a solid entry in...
The life of James Madison Hemings, believed by most scholars to be one of several children Thomas Jefferson had with enslaved Sally Hemings, is imagined in this picture book of historical fiction.
James Madison Hemings looks back at his childhood as an enslaved person at Monticello. As he grows up he learns Jefferson is his father, but this connection is never to be acknowledged. Madison, as he is referred to in historical accounts, relates how the unspoken relationship affects his and his siblings’ lives: where they live, what they learn, and ultimately their freedom. “And yet, my name was written in my father’s ‘Farm Book’—the ledger where he recorded all his property.” In this first-person narrative, a child’s confused attempts to make sense of his situation ring true. Winter creates a tone of secrecy and distance in a place where no one is allowed to speak truth. Widener’s acrylic illustrations with their pastoral palette contribute to this with stillness, though they are not static. The many images of Madison as an observer of his surroundings reflect the fact he was the only one of Sally Hemings’ children to leave a written record of his life, a major source for Winter’s story. The detailed author’s note will be a welcome resource for adults, guiding them in answering young readers’ questions.
The strength of this telling is the way it encourages readers to empathize with Madison’s plight, making it a solid entry in that class of picture books tackling tough topics. (Picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-385-38342-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
Rappaport makes this long struggle palpable and relevant, while Faulkner adds a winning mix of gravitas and high spirits.
Rappaport examines the salient successes and raw setbacks along the 144-year-long road between the nation’s birth and women’s suffrage.
This lively yet forthright narrative pivots on a reality that should startle modern kids: women’s right to vote was only achieved in 1920, 72 years after Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York. Indeed, time’s passage figures as a textual motif, connecting across decades such determined women as Stanton, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucy Stone. They spoke tirelessly, marched, organized, and got arrested. Rappaport includes events such as 1913’s Women’s Suffrage Parade in Washington, D.C., but doesn’t shy from divisive periods like the Civil War. Faulkner’s meticulously researched gouache-and-ink illustrations often infuse scenes with humor by playing with size and perspective. As Stanton and Lucretia Mott sail into London in 1840 for the World Anti-Slavery Conference, Faulkner depicts the two women as giants on the ship’s upper deck. On the opposite page, as they learn they’ll be barred as delegates, they’re painted in miniature, dwarfed yet unflappable beneath a gallery full of disapproving men. A final double-page spread mingles such modern stars as Shirley Chisholm and Sonia Sotomayor amid the historical leaders.
Rappaport makes this long struggle palpable and relevant, while Faulkner adds a winning mix of gravitas and high spirits. (biographical thumbnails, chronology, sources, websites, further reading, author’s note) (Picture book/biography. 6-8)Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7868-5142-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
A quietly compelling look at an impoverished family’s resourcefulness and resilience.
Wheeler shares a poignant tale, based on her grandmother’s childhood, of a Depression-era family’s hard times.
Marvel, 6, has seven siblings. Their newly widowed mother guides them, as they carry their worldly goods along, into the woods, where they find an abandoned shack. Though decrepit, it’s got a root cellar, a functioning water pump, a wood stove, and a garden spot rich with leaf mold. As summer yields to autumn, Mum does chores for pay in town. The children draw lots for the home tasks: laundry (hand-scrubbed and hung to dry), wood-splitting, and more. A bountiful harvest engenders prodigious canning as the family prepares for the bitter weather ahead. While the children must buy only basic supplies at the general store, their doleful window shopping produces an inventive outdoor game, in which “We can buy anything we want!” Winter brings snow and cold, quilting, reading by the wood stove, and a wild-turkey stew. Wheeler’s lovely ink-and-watercolor double-page spreads, in somber grays, sunlight yellow, and meadow green, evoke both the period and the family’s stark poverty. The thin faces are gray-white, with dark hair and pale pink cheeks. Delicate visual details abound, from the sparkle of evening raindrops to Mum’s side-buttoned apron. Marvel’s ruminative narration takes occasional poetic turns: “Mum stays awake / into the night… / …whispering / to / the / stars.”
A quietly compelling look at an impoverished family’s resourcefulness and resilience. (author’s note) (Picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-16290-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
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