An excellent, well-researched model of its genre that will inspire children to do whatever they desire in life, no matter...
Belva Lockwood was a teacher, a lawyer (first woman to enter the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court), a suffragist, and a presidential candidate.
This remarkable woman stands out for many reasons, including her two presidential campaigns in 1884 and 1888. Belva’s awareness of women’s issues came early. She became a teacher at 14 but found out that she was only paid half of a man’s salary. Later, her father did not want her to attend college (even though she was 24, already a widow and a mother), and the college she attended did not want her to study what were traditionally men’s subjects: “math, science and politics.” Law school proved to be an even bigger challenge. After she was finally allowed to attend, she was denied a diploma upon graduation and had to demand it from President Ulysses S. Grant (also the president of the law school). She is also known for winning a major Supreme Court case on behalf of the Cherokee nation. This is an engaging introduction to a woman unknown to many, young and old, giving some insight into her adventurous personality. In one illustration, the white woman rides a penny-farthing bicycle (in her floor-length skirt), just like the male lawyers in Washington, D.C. Her quotes are integrated into the illustrations, executed in oils with a crackle varnish, with a look reminiscent of 19th-century folk art. Soft blues and browns predominate in the naïve paintings, lending to their antique appearance.
An excellent, well-researched model of its genre that will inspire children to do whatever they desire in life, no matter what immediate restrictions exist. (author’s note, timeline, bibliography, source notes) (Picture book/biography. 8-11)Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-62979-453-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Calkins Creek/Astra Books for Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
Well-informed and much-idealized if not entirely simplistic pictures of both the great man and his bustling estate.
Stepping carefully around the controversies, a former curator at Monticello reconstructs the septuagenarian Jefferson’s active daily round.
Jefferson’s fixed routine begins with a faithful recording of temperature and weather at first rising and ends with a final period of solitary reading by candlelight in his unusual alcove bed. In between, the author describes in often fussy detail the range of his interests and enterprises. There’s not only his “polygraph” and other beloved gadgets, but also meals, family members, visitors, and excursions to Monticello’s diverse gardens, workshops and outbuildings. Like the dialogue, which mixes inventions with historical utterances, the generous suite of visuals includes photos of furnishings and artifacts as well as stodgy full-page tableaux and vignettes painted by Elliott. The “slaves” or “enslaved” workers (the author uses the terms interchangeably) that Jefferson encounters through the day are all historical and named—but Sally Hemings and her Jeffersonian offspring are conspicuously absent (aside from a brief name check buried in the closing timeline). Jefferson adroitly sidesteps a pointed question from his grandson, who accompanies him on his rounds, by pleading his age: “The work of ending slavery is for the young.”
Well-informed and much-idealized if not entirely simplistic pictures of both the great man and his bustling estate. (sidebars, endnotes, bibliography) (Nonfiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4197-0541-0
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
Routine assignment fodder.
A standard-issue profile of the renowned activist—one of a spate launched by his death in December 2013.
Doeden opens with Mandela on trial for treason in 1964, closes with a quote from Barack Obama’s eulogy and in between covers the civil rights leader’s long career from childhood to final illness. Small news photos and boxed discussions of apartheid and Steve Biko’s brief life accompany a narrative that reads like a term paper—though, looking at the paltry lists of notes and sources at the end, an inadequately documented one. Along with plenty of similar bio-trivia, readers will find out that Mandela moved from village schools in Qunu and Mqhekezweni to Clarkebury Boarding Institute, Healdtown and the University of Fort Hare before getting a correspondence-course law degree from the University of South Africa…but not why any of that is worth knowing or what light it sheds on his character, achievements and historical significance. Yona Zeldis McDonough’s Peaceful Protest (illustrated by Malcah Zeldis, 2002) or Kadir Nelson’s terse but masterful Nelson Mandela (2013) supply clearer, more cogent tributes.
Routine assignment fodder. (further reading, websites, index) (Biography. 8-11)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4677-5197-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Lerner
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
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