Jamaica (Jamaica and Brianna, 1993, etc.) is back in another a gentle story, and in for another moral dilemma. Her class has a calm, smiling substitute teacher, Mrs. Duval, who explains that while the regular teacher is absent, “I plan for us to work hard, but we’ll have fun, too.” Jamaica earns high praise for her reading aloud, for finding the hidden penguin, and for answering math puzzles, but when she gets to the spelling test, she can’t remember how to spell “calf.” Yielding to temptation, she looks at her friend’s paper. The tests are corrected, and she gets 100%, but Jamaica knows she copied and doesn’t turn the paper in, later confessing (unprompted) to her behavior. The teacher praises Jamaica’s courage in admitting she cheated, and says, “You don’t have to be perfect to be special in my class. All my students are special. I’m glad you’re one of them.” The softly colored pastel drawings show Jamaica, her range of emotions, appealing classmates, and the teacher’s kindly nature. This sensitive treatment of the topic makes the book ideal for group discussion. (Picture book. 6-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-90503-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
That Bynum comes up with so many lines to rhyme with “Altoona Baboona” deserves some kind of acclaim, even if the rhymes make readers laugh and groan at the same time. Altoona Baboona is an ape that “gets bored on her dune-a,” hops a “hot air balloon-a” and goes south to “Calcun-a.” On her hot air travels Altoona meets up with a loon-a and a racoon-a, who come back to the dune-a for an evening bonfire and roasted marshmallows. Bynum’s watercolors have a breezy ocean air feel to them, as light and buoyant as her simian heroine. (Picture book. 2-6)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-15-201860-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
Ringgold’s biography of Rosa Parks packs substantial material into a few pages, but with a light touch, and with the ring of authenticity that gives her act of weary resistance all the respect it deserves. Narrating the book is the bus that Parks took that morning 45 years ago; it recounts the signal events in Parks’s life to a young girl who boarded it to go to school. A decent amount of the material will probably be new to children, for Parks is so intimately associated with the Montgomery Bus Boycott that her work with the NAACP before the bus incident is often overlooked, as is her later role as a community activist in Detroit with Congressman John Conyers. Ringgold, through the bus, also informs readers of Parks’s youth in rural Alabama, where Klansmen and nightriders struck fear into the lives of African-Americans. These experiences make her refusal to release her seat all the more courageous, for the consequences of resistance were not gentle. All the events are depicted in emotive naive artwork that underscores their truth; Ringgold delivers Parks’s story without hyperbole, but rather as a life lived with pride, conviction, and consequence. (Picture book/biography. 5-9)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-689-81892-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
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