A book worth uplifting.
A celebration of 12 Black women who helped shape a movement.
This illuminating picture book begins with a pointed description of the civil rights movement that highlights Black women’s crucial roles in the fight for equality. Next, Russell-Brown includes a list of the book’s 13 sections (one devoted to each woman and a final one on the freedom marchers); though a few names will be readily recognizable, many may be unfamiliar. Readers learn how Ella Baker helped start the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Other highlights—Ruby Bridges and her fight to integrate schools, Claudette Colvin’s refusal to move to the back of a Montgomery bus, and Dorothy Cotton’s ability to organize people—will also inspire young readers to make a difference in their own lives. Other notable figures include Fannie Lou Hamer, Coretta Scott King, Diane Nash, Rosa Parks, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Gloria Richardson, Jo Ann Robinson, and Sheyann Webb. The subjects are organized alphabetically by last name, and each entry lists their place of birth and life span, indicating that some of these heroes are still among us and that the fight for racial equality was not so long ago. Entries offer brief but energizing summaries of these women’s contributions along with realistically vibrant illustrations that depict these larger-than-life figures in action. Backmatter includes quotes from each subject and a list of resources to learn more about these influential women. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A book worth uplifting. (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-40354-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Lovely illustrations wasted on this misguided project.
The Celebrate the World series spotlights Lunar New Year.
This board book blends expository text and first-person-plural narrative, introducing readers to the holiday. Chau’s distinctive, finely textured watercolor paintings add depth, transitioning smoothly from a grand cityscape to the dining room table, from fantasies of the past to dumplings of the present. The text attempts to provide a broad look at the subject, including other names for the celebration, related cosmology, and historical background, as well as a more-personal discussion of traditions and practices. Yet it’s never clear who the narrator is—while the narrative indicates the existence of some consistent, monolithic group who participates in specific rituals of celebration (“Before the new year celebrations begin, we clean our homes—and ourselves!”), the illustrations depict different people in every image. Indeed, observances of Lunar New Year are as diverse as the people who celebrate it, which neither the text nor the images—all of the people appear to be Asian—fully acknowledges. Also unclear is the book’s intended audience. With large blocks of explication on every spread, it is entirely unappealing for the board-book set, and the format may make it equally unattractive to an older, more appropriate audience. Still, readers may appreciate seeing an important celebration warmly and vibrantly portrayed.
Lovely illustrations wasted on this misguided project. (Board book. 4-8)Pub Date: Dec. 11, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3303-8
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40.
From two Nobel Peace Prize winners, an invitation to look past sadness and loneliness to the joy that surrounds us.
Bobbing in the wake of 2016’s heavyweight Book of Joy (2016), this brief but buoyant address to young readers offers an earnest insight: “If you just focus on the thing that is making / you sad, then the sadness is all you see. / But if you look around, you will / see that joy is everywhere.” López expands the simply delivered proposal in fresh and lyrical ways—beginning with paired scenes of the authors as solitary children growing up in very different circumstances on (as they put it) “opposite sides of the world,” then meeting as young friends bonded by streams of rainbow bunting and going on to share their exuberantly hued joy with a group of dancers diverse in terms of age, race, culture, and locale while urging readers to do the same. Though on the whole this comes off as a bit bland (the banter and hilarity that characterized the authors’ recorded interchanges are absent here) and their advice just to look away from the sad things may seem facile in view of what too many children are inescapably faced with, still, it’s hard to imagine anyone in the world more qualified to deliver such a message than these two. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-48423-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
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