Joan Trumpauer Mulholland’s is not a name that is familiar in children’s books; this is an excellent opportunity to correct...
A young white Southern woman becomes an active participant in the civil rights struggle.
Born to staunch segregationists in Virginia, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland grew up in the 1950s, but a determination for equal rights for both white and black people led her to take part in lunch-counter demonstrations and become a Freedom Rider. Incarceration in an infamous Mississippi prison did not change her beliefs, and she joined the 1963 March on Washington. In 2013, her son, Loki Mulholland, produced a film about her life entitled An Ordinary Hero. In this book, he and Fairwell present important events in brief but dramatic vignettes. Mulholland’s courage and determination are stressed and explained in terms that young readers can understand. When as a child she first sees a black schoolhouse, “Joan’s soul was rattled. This was not fair.” The colorful cut-paper–collage illustrations by Janssen feature photographs, photographic imagery, and scenes that should be familiar to those studying the time period. A biography for middle graders by Loki Mulholland, also called She Stood for Freedom, publishes simultaneously.
Joan Trumpauer Mulholland’s is not a name that is familiar in children’s books; this is an excellent opportunity to correct an oversight. (timeline) (Picture book/biography. 8-10)Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62972-176-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Shadow Mountain
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
Lenticular plates add an appropriately eye-catching gimmick to this quick profile of the 19th-century photographer whose sequential photographs of a horse galloping established that during its stride, all four hooves left the ground.
The four lenticular plates (one of which is duplicated for the cover) are based on Muybridge’s photos and more or less suggest what audiences who viewed the originals through his spinning Zoopraxiscope might have seen. Unfortunately, two are silhouettes, and none can be angled to offer a clean single image. More helpfully, the full sets of stills from which the plates are drawn along with sequences of other characteristic subjects—from the galloping horse that first made him famous to a flying bird and a winsome child picking up a doll—are included too. These, along with Braun’s terse but specific account of Muybridge’s career and achievements offer a clearer sense of why his photos are still worth studying for what they reveal about animal and human movement. Not to mention that they’re entertaining to pore over. As he regularly rates mention in histories of early filmmaking but almost never anywhere else, his work may be new to young readers and viewers, to boot. Low production values notwithstanding, a rare glimpse of a historically significant visual artist who also plainly had a well-developed sense of fun. (chronology, resource list) (Biography. 8-10)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-77085-229-7
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Firefly
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
As Wild Bill Hickok “says” in his blurb: “Factual as far as it goes.” (glossary, further reading, index) (Nonfiction. 8-10)
Following other books in the What if You Met…(a Pirate, 2004; a Knight, 2006) series, this title somewhat less successfully tackles the subject of cowboys.
The image of the handsome cowboy idealized in movies, “on the lookout for pretty schoolteachers and Indians on the warpath,” is shattered by Jacob McHugh Peavey, the “real deal,” unwashed and unshaven. Only careful readers will determine that Jake’s heyday was around 1860-1885. He’s white, although Adkins notes that “[a]bout half of [cowboys] are African-American, Indian, or Hispanic.” Cowgirls are dismissed in a side note. Given this limited perspective, youngsters interested in diversity in the Wild West will want to look elsewhere. Those not familiar with the history of Native Americans may require a source to understand potentially confusing descriptions of Franciscan missionaries who introduced horses in the Southwest as “relatively gentle and patient” conquerors who received an assist from European diseases or the “hostile native” tribes or youth that may on occasion pose a threat to Jake. (Source notes—a list of titles consulted—are provided, but there are no specific citations.) However, children enamored of cowboy gear and cattle drives will find a plethora of information about and detailed illustrations of saddles, guns, brands, the chuck wagon and more, each topic covered in one or two pages.
As Wild Bill Hickok “says” in his blurb: “Factual as far as it goes.” (glossary, further reading, index) (Nonfiction. 8-10)Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59643-149-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
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