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
In cartoon panels, the inimitable Williams offers snapshots of ancient Rome from the mythological creation of the universe to the fall of the empire.
Lightly salting her account with Latin quips (“In theobroma cacao fidemus!”), Williams pens a semiserious narrative history broken up into bite-sized bits on single-topic spreads (“The Gruesome Gauls”). She illustrates them with small cartoon scenes that depict significant incidents or scenes of daily life. Dropping side comments and the occasional Res vera (“fact”) as he goes, a dozy dormouse aptly named Dormeo Augustus squires young readers along. He leads them past the major gods, the tale of Romulus and Remus, Rome’s first seven kings, the Republic, the Caesars and a select few other emperors. There are side excursions to the Forum and a crowded bath, plus glimpses of patrician and plebeian life, slavery, gladiators and the renowned Roman army. Though a certain amount of mayhem makes its way into her account, the author tones down the worst excesses (as Dormeo puts it, the Sabine women were “treated most cruelly”—that’s one way to put it) or acknowledges them only in passing. Not a very detailed picture, but broad enough to leave younger readers with a general sense of how grand the grandeur was. (Informational picture book. 8-10)
Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6581-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
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
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