Laura Wheeler Waring saw “brown [as] a rainbow” and painted it that way.
Growing up in turn-of-the-20th-century Connecticut in a middle-class African American household, Laura works for “hours mixing and blending” paints in order to replicate the shades she sees in her family members. Determined to pursue a career in art, she studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and then in Paris, honing her craft. Attending a concert given by a young Marian Anderson, Laura vows to paint the singer someday. A 1944 commission for “portraits of important African Americans” finds her painting the likenesses of Alice Dunbar Nelson, James Weldon Johnson, W.E.B. Du Bois—and Marian Anderson. Churnin ably conjures the painter’s process, thrillingly describing Laura’s painstaking combination of shades to create just the right browns for each subject. She is less adept at helping readers understand the barriers Laura must have faced, saying only that “there weren’t portraits of African Americans in museums” during Laura’s childhood and that her art education was undertaken among mostly white peers; one sentence in her author’s note acknowledges the limited opportunities available to African Americans of Laura’s time. While the evocation of Laura’s joy in her art is admirable, skimming over the everyday injustices she must have faced paints only half her picture. Marshall’s illustrations are appropriately painterly, capturing the play of light on her characters’ brown faces.
An important story only partially realized. (timeline, further reading) (Picture book/biography. 5-8)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-939547-65-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Creston
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
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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. 7, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
Categories: CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CHILDREN'S HISTORY
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The junior senator from California introduces family and friends as everyday superheroes.
The endpapers are covered with cascades of, mostly, early childhood snapshots (“This is me contemplating the future”—caregivers of toddlers will recognize that abstracted look). In between, Harris introduces heroes in her life who have shaped her character: her mom and dad, whose superpowers were, respectively, to make her feel special and brave; an older neighbor known for her kindness; grandparents in India and Jamaica who “[stood] up for what’s right” (albeit in unspecified ways); other relatives and a teacher who opened her awareness to a wider world; and finally iconic figures such as Thurgood Marshall and Constance Baker Motley who “protected people by using the power of words and ideas” and whose examples inspired her to become a lawyer. “Heroes are…YOU!” she concludes, closing with a bulleted Hero Code and a timeline of her legal and political career that ends with her 2017 swearing-in as senator. In group scenes, some of the figures in the bright, simplistic digital illustrations have Asian features, some are in wheelchairs, nearly all are people of color. Almost all are smiling or grinning. Roe provides everyone identified as a role model with a cape and poses the author, who is seen at different ages wearing an identifying heart pin or decoration, next to each.
Self-serving to be sure but also chock-full of worthy values and sentiments. (Picture book/memoir. 5-8)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-984837-49-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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