This brief biography makes Frank’s writing an effective introductory focus for young readers.
Anne Frank’s story of confinement for several years after the Nazi takeover of the Netherlands, including her tragic death, is simply but accessibly told.
Marshall introduces Anne as an individual. “As a baby, Anne cried. LOUD. As a toddler, she was silly and made everyone laugh. And as a little girl, she spoke her mind.” Marshall intersperses this account with brief historical interludes. An image of Anne and her friend throwing water on people from a balcony is indicative of her happy early childhood, but by 1940 the Nazis invaded the Netherlands. When she receives her diary for her 13th birthday, the text notes that Anne “wrote about new rules that stopped her—and all Jews—from riding bikes, going to movies, playing in public parks, and attending public schools.” Children will understand how these restrictions would change life immeasurably. Marshall chronicles the Franks’ time in the Secret Annex with short, poetic sentences about what Anne wrote. The flat illustrations show Anne with her dark hair and intense eyes in happy and sad times, the lack of depth emphasizing Anne’s confinement. History is reflected on several pages with darker palettes that include maps to help readers understand the proximity of Germany to the countries it conquered. The last spread celebrates Anne’s legacy.
This brief biography makes Frank’s writing an effective introductory focus for young readers. (afterword, timeline, author's note, sources, bibliography, websites) (Picture book/biography. 7-9)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-31229-4
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
Serviceable as assignment fodder or as a gateway to more searching studies.
A short, occasionally revealing profile of an immigrant who got the job done.
Joining other children’s-book creators attempting to ride the Broadway phenomenon’s coattails, Adler creates a distant, even staid, portrait of Hamilton’s character. Opening and closing with accounts of the Burr duel, he also drops in a few too many names without sufficient context. Still, along with noting his subject’s major public achievements in war and peace and making some references to his private life, he does frankly note in the main narrative that Alexander was born to unmarried parents and in the afterword that he was taken in for a time by a family that may have included a half brother. (The author also makes a revealing if carelessly phrased observation that he helped to run a business in his youth that dealt in “many things,” including “enslaved people.”) Collins’ neatly limned painted scenes lack much sense of movement, but he’s careful with details of historical dress and setting. Most of his figures are light skinned, but there are people of color in early dockside views, in a rank of charging American soldiers, and also (possibly) in a closing parade of mourners. Multichapter biographies abound, but as a first introduction, this entry in Adler’s long-running series won’t bring younger readers to their feet but does fill in around the edges of Don Brown’s Aaron and Alexander: The Most Famous Duel in American History (2015).
Serviceable as assignment fodder or as a gateway to more searching studies. (timeline, bibliography, notes) (Picture book/biography. 7-9)Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3961-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Jet-propelled—but a good introduction nevertheless.
A quick tour through our planet’s past, from the aptly named Hadean Eon to the invention of writing.
With a cheery reassurance that their facts are “bang up-to-date and checked by experts!” two young tour guides—one light skinned, one dark—begin by ushering readers past Earth’s fiery beginnings (“Monstrous volcanoes spew out lava”). The earliest signs of life and the age of dinosaurs give way to Australopithecus afarensis “Lucy,” Homo sapiens, the appearance of cave paintings 40,000 years ago, and so on to stone tools, farming, and, finally, 4,000-year-old hymns ascribed to the first identified author, a Sumerian priestess named En-hedu-anna. For all their claims, the veteran collaborators (Books! Books! Books!, 2017, etc.) do slip up occasionally, repeatedly noting for instance, that pterosaurs are flying reptiles and not dinosaurs but neglecting to explain the difference and by understating the currently theorized age of the oldest cave art by over 20,000 years. Still, in their cartoon illustrations they bring young time tourists face to face with now-vanished creatures, several types of prehuman ancestors, a (light-skinned, female) cave artist, and En-hedu-anna, dressed in elaborate regalia and digging away on a clay tablet. And, just for fun, a timeline designed as a board game at the end offers a painless review of the passing eras.
Jet-propelled—but a good introduction nevertheless. (glossary) (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-91095-976-3
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Otter-Barry
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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