by Michael Mahin ; illustrated by José Ramírez ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 4, 2018
A musical journey perfectly aimed at young readers’ excitement to know what they will be.
From the three-way scrimmage among his great-aunt, his father, and his mother for the right to name him—his mother won—to his growth as a musician, Carlos yearns to hear the song of angels.
Instrument after instrument fails to resonate within his heart until the chords of a guitar stand his arm hairs on end. “An angel’s breath?” But not even his beloved guitar can drown out the English-speaking bullies in San Francisco schools, so he runs away and returns to Tijuana. His family, however disagrees. They’d left Mexico for a better life, and they will not let Carlos stay behind. Bit by bit, the city’s diverse cultural harmonies become one: “the soul of the blues,…the brains of jazz,…the energy of rock and roll…the slow heat of Afro-Cuban drums and the cilantro-scented sway of the music you’d grown up with.” The Santana Blues Band plays through Carlos’ homesickness, plays through Martin Luther King Jr.’s death, plays through Vietnam’s destruction and America’s unrest, until, in front of 400,000 people in Woodstock, the angels finally sing—not to but within Carlos. Ramírez’s double-page–spread acrylic-and–enamel-marker images evoke the vibrant electric energy of Huichol yarn art. The years denoting milestones in Carlos’ story subtly blend into the multicolored pages. Mahin’s second-person lyrical narrative unites the disparate elements that ultimately became Santana.
A musical journey perfectly aimed at young readers’ excitement to know what they will be. (author’s note, bibliography, discography) (Picture book/biography. 6-11)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5344-0413-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
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by Ruby Shamir ; illustrated by Matt Faulkner ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 2, 2017
A reasonably solid grounding in constitutional rights, their flexibility, lacunae, and hard-won corrections, despite a few...
Shamir offers an investigation of the foundations of freedoms in the United States via its founding documents, as well as movements and individuals who had great impacts on shaping and reshaping those institutions.
The opening pages of this picture book get off to a wobbly start with comments such as “You know that feeling you get…when you see a wide open field that you can run through without worrying about traffic or cars? That’s freedom.” But as the book progresses, Shamir slowly steadies the craft toward that wide-open field of freedom. She notes the many obvious-to-us-now exclusivities that the founding political documents embodied—that the entitled, white, male authors did not extend freedom to enslaved African-Americans, Native Americans, and women—and encourages readers to learn to exercise vigilance and foresight. The gradual inclusion of these left-behind people paints a modestly rosy picture of their circumstances today, and the text seems to give up on explaining how Native Americans continue to be left behind. Still, a vital part of what makes freedom daunting is its constant motion, and that is ably expressed. Numerous boxed tidbits give substance to the bigger political picture. Who were the abolitionists and the suffragists, what were the Montgomery bus boycott and the “Uprising of 20,000”? Faulkner’s artwork conveys settings and emotions quite well, and his drawing of Ruby Bridges is about as darling as it gets. A helpful timeline and bibliography appear as endnotes.
A reasonably solid grounding in constitutional rights, their flexibility, lacunae, and hard-won corrections, despite a few misfires. (Informational picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-54728-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
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by Brad Meltzer ; illustrated by Christopher Eliopoulos ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 10, 2019
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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