Go-girl power and a good read.
The strong roots of a presidential hopeful.
Growing up in the 1950s meant coming of age in a “man’s world,” but not for Hillary Rodham. She was active in school, motivated, and never a fashionista. Outspoken in college and interested in social causes, she became a lawyer and married Bill Clinton. As first lady she espoused a political and social welfare agenda and went on to become one of New York’s senators and—two times now—a candidate for president of the United States. Markel, clearly an admirer, presents Clinton’s life as part and parcel of the women’s movement for empowerment, writing throughout in a very lively voice. Pham’s artwork is the real vote-getter. With a colorful palette, she presents Clinton’s personal and professional sides. Scenes of campus activism, facing unfriendly crowds, taking to the podium, and meeting with world figures fill the busy pages. Both for fun and education are two double-page tableaux. The first features men of achievement in muted tones of gray and brown while a young Hillary in Scout uniform stands arms akimbo. The second showcases great women with Clinton dressed in a trademark red pantsuit. Those who need help identifying faces in either will find keys in the back of the book.
Go-girl power and a good read. (timeline, artist’s note, selected bibliography) (Picture books/biography. 7-10)Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-238122-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
Throughout my young days at school and just afterwards a number of things happened to me that I have never forgotten. . . . Some are funny. Some are painful. Some are unpleasant. I suppose that is why I have always remembered them so vividly." Vividly indeed: with the intimate, confiding tone of a born storyteller, Dahl turns each of his family/school memories into a miniature adventure, thriller, or horror-story—with the earthy emphasis on pleasure (food, comradeship), fear, and pain. After a brief, charming slice of family-history, explaining how his Norwegian parents came to live and prosper in Wales, Dahl gets right down to business. From the years at Llandaff Cathedral School (ages 7-9, 1923-25), there's a candy-by-candy tribute to the local sweet-shop, site of "The Great Mouse Plot": Roald and friends, fed up with the meanness of filthy sweet-shop-owner Mrs. Pratchett, secretly put a dead mouse in the Gobstopper jar—but suffered mightily for their glorious prank. (Mrs. P. reported the crime to the Headmaster—unleashing the first of many school-career canings, all described in gruesome, technicolor detail.) Summer vacations in Norway are also recalled in a mixture of ecstasy—the fish, the scenery—and agony: an operation for adenoid removal without any anesthetic. And the extremes of pleasure and pain continue through Dahl's years at two English boarding schools: homesickness, sadistic Matrons and Masters, practical jokes, the indignities of "fagging" (warming up the toilet-seat for older boys), chocolates. . . and, always, the dreaded Headmaster's cane. ("By now I am sure you will be wondering why I lay so much emphasis upon school beatings in these pages. The answer is that. . . I couldn't get over it. I never have got over it.") Some readers may be put off by Dahl's style here—chatty, bedtime-story-ish, deceptively avuncular. Others might not take to the British references (no special explanations for a US audience), or the particularly British approach—full of bitter humor and odd relish—to grisly, gory matters. But those who've appreciated Dahl in various forms will find both the master of chills and the lover of chocolate here—in a fine, juicy collage of funny/awful boyhood highlights.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1984
ISBN: 0374373744
Page Count: -
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1984
She said, “Failure is impossible,” and she was right, but unfortunately her steely determination does not come through in...
Susan B. Anthony worked to win women the right to vote her whole long life, but she did not live to see it done.
Wallner uses her flat decorative style and rich matte colors to depict Susan B. Anthony’s life, layering on details: Susan catching snowflakes behind her parents’ house; working in her father’s mill (briefly) and then departing school when the money ran out; writing at her desk; speaking passionately in front of small groups and rowdy crowds. It’s a little too wordy and a little less than engaging in describing a life in which Anthony traveled alone, hired her own halls, spoke tirelessly about women’s suffrage, published, created forums where women could speak freely and was arrested for registering to vote. Her life-long friendship with suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton is touched on, as are the virulent attacks against her ideas and her person. She died in 1906. Votes for women did not come to pass in the United States until 1920.
She said, “Failure is impossible,” and she was right, but unfortunately her steely determination does not come through in this book. (timeline, bibliography, source notes) (Picture book/biography. 7-10)Pub Date: March 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8234-1953-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2012
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