National Young People’s Poet Laureate Engle brings to children the story of Aída de Acosta, who in 1903 became the first woman to fly a motorized aircraft.
In her trademark free-verse style, Engle tells the story of Aída, a white Hispanic teenager from New Jersey who, on a trip to Paris, is dazzled by the sight of a balloon gliding by with an air boat dangling beneath and a man inside it. Determined to fly too, Aída approaches the inventor of the airship: Alberto Santos-Dumont, a Brazilian inventor known in his country as the father of aviation, achieving flight six months before the Wright brothers. Aída learns to fly, and fly she does, much to the consternation of her contemporaries: “girls, they bellowed, should never / be taught how to fly / huge machines.” Palacios’ exuberant mixed-media artwork is vibrant and colorful, in tune with Aída. Readers will chuckle at her portrayal of an aerial dinner with the waiters on stilts. In a closing note the author gives additional detail, including Aída’s promise to her father that she would keep her daring deed a secret and, later in life, after losing an eye to glaucoma, her becoming the director of the first eye bank in America.
A beautiful account of a young woman who knew that all she needed to reach her dream was courage and a chance to try. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4814-4502-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
Categories: CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CHILDREN'S TRANSPORTATION
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A memorable, lyrical reverse-chronological walk through the life of an American icon.
In free verse, Cline-Ransome narrates the life of Harriet Tubman, starting and ending with a train ride Tubman takes as an old woman. “But before wrinkles formed / and her eyes failed,” Tubman could walk tirelessly under a starlit sky. Cline-Ransome then describes the array of roles Tubman played throughout her life, including suffragist, abolitionist, Union spy, and conductor on the Underground Railroad. By framing the story around a literal train ride, the Ransomes juxtapose the privilege of traveling by rail against Harriet’s earlier modes of travel, when she repeatedly ran for her life. Racism still abounds, however, for she rides in a segregated train. While the text introduces readers to the details of Tubman’s life, Ransome’s use of watercolor—such a striking departure from his oil illustrations in many of his other picture books—reveals Tubman’s humanity, determination, drive, and hope. Ransome’s lavishly detailed and expansive double-page spreads situate young readers in each time and place as the text takes them further into the past.
A picture book more than worthy of sharing the shelf with Alan Schroeder and Jerry Pinkney’s Minty (1996) and Carole Boston Weatherford and Kadir Nelson’s Moses (2006). (Picture book/biography. 5-8)Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2047-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
Categories: CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CHILDREN'S HISTORY
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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
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