Sweet, feel-good fare for young Swifties.
A pithy panegyric for the planet’s highest-paid and possibly most popular performing artist.
Considering that Taylor Swift is still producing music, she may seem an odd choice for a biographical series titled Who Was? Still, for younger readers who can’t get enough Taylor, Mayer lays out the oft-told essentials of her career from birth and early signs of talent to a few months beyond the end of the “Eras” tour in December of 2024—with some choice bits about friendship bracelets, baking cookies, “fairy godmother” charitable work, and how Swift color-codes outfits to match her albums. Further insight into her character is confined to repeated references to how she stays “true to herself” and insists on “saying what she want[s] to say.” No mention is made of her dating life or (squeal!) recent engagement. With much use of pinks and purples, Mariana’s illustrations depict the superstar winking up at readers from the title page, then go on to scenes of her performing in increasingly large venues after her public debut in 2004 at age 14, meeting fans of diverse skin color, and bustling about her kitchen at Christmas. She “has proven over and over again,” the author concludes in a final line, “that a young woman should never be underestimated.”
Sweet, feel-good fare for young Swifties. (awards list, bibliography, website, discography, timeline) (Picture-book biography. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9798217052059
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses.
An NBA star pays tribute to the influence of his grandfather.
In the same vein as his Long Shot (2009), illustrated by Frank Morrison, this latest from Paul prioritizes values and character: “My granddad Papa Chilly had dreams that came true,” he writes, “so maybe if I listen and watch him, / mine will too.” So it is that the wide-eyed Black child in the simply drawn illustrations rises early to get to the playground hoops before anyone else, watches his elder working hard and respecting others, hears him cheering along with the rest of the family from the stands during games, and recalls in a prose afterword that his grandfather wasn’t one to lecture but taught by example. Paul mentions in both the text and the backmatter that Papa Chilly was the first African American to own a service station in North Carolina (his presumed dream) but not that he was killed in a robbery, which has the effect of keeping the overall tone positive and the instructional content one-dimensional. Figures in the pictures are mostly dark-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-250-81003-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
Blandly laudatory.
The iconic animator introduces young readers to each “happy place” in his life.
The tally begins with his childhood home in Marceline, Missouri, and climaxes with Disneyland (carefully designed to be “the happiest place on Earth”), but the account really centers on finding his true happy place, not on a map but in drawing. In sketching out his early flubs and later rocket to the top, the fictive narrator gives Ub Iwerks and other Disney studio workers a nod (leaving his labor disputes with them unmentioned) and squeezes in quick references to his animated films, from Steamboat Willie to Winnie the Pooh (sans Fantasia and Song of the South). Eliopoulos incorporates stills from the films into his cartoon illustrations and, characteristically for this series, depicts Disney as a caricature, trademark mustache in place on outsized head even in childhood years and child sized even as an adult. Human figures default to white, with occasional people of color in crowd scenes and (ahistorically) in the animation studio. One unidentified animator builds up the role-modeling with an observation that Walt and Mickey were really the same (“Both fearless; both resourceful”). An assertion toward the end—“So when do you stop being a child? When you stop dreaming”—muddles the overall follow-your-bliss message. A timeline to the EPCOT Center’s 1982 opening offers photos of the man with select associates, rodent and otherwise. An additional series entry, I Am Marie Curie, publishes simultaneously, featuring a gowned, toddler-sized version of the groundbreaking physicist accepting her two Nobel prizes.
Blandly laudatory. (bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2875-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
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