POCAHONTAS

Lush jewel tones illustrate this exploration of the short life of one of the most intriguing figures of colonial American history. Extrapolating from the English sources that are the only documentary accounts of Pocahontas’s life, Krull imagines her subject as a spirited, willful child, very conscious of her status as daughter of Chief Powhatan, and curious enough to engage with the new arrivals at Jamestown. Conjecture surrounds the central event in what has become the Pocahontas myth. The narrative economically continues the intertwined stories of Pocahontas’s maturation and the travails of the white settlers, depicting a woman forced by circumstance into the role she played but nevertheless accepting it with grace and intelligence. Diaz’s stylized illustrations are undeniably gorgeous; however, his rendering of Pocahontas is one of idealized beauty, fuzzy outlines relegating her back to the world of mythology and working against the carefully balanced text. They lack the specificity of Rosalyn Schanzer’s illustrations in John Smith Escapes Again (2006) and leave the question of authenticity unresolved. (Picture book/biography. 6-11)