Delicious! (period photograph, author’s note, timeline, selected bibliography of adult sources) (Picture book/biography. 6-9)
Miller shares the true story of the invention of the doughnut with the hole in its center.
Hanson Gregory began his career at sea in 1844, at age 13, eventually captaining cargo schooners and clippers. As cook’s assistant in 1847, while preparing the usual deep-fried cakes for breakfast, Hanson had an idea. The sailors called the cakes “sinkers”: they were crisp at the edges but raw and greasy in the middle. Using the lid from a pepper tin to cut a hole in each cake’s center, Hanson fried a batch of cakes that “were brown, and sweet, and fully cooked. Sighs of delight rose above the noisy sea. A new breakfast tradition was born.” The author’s research unfolds a couple of colorful, alternate legends of the doughnut’s seagoing origins, since, naturally, “sailors like their stories bold.” Miller also recounts comments that Capt. Gregory made in a 1916 newspaper interview. “He laughed as he teased the reporter that he had invented ‘the first hole ever seen by mortal eyes.’ ” Kirsch’s charming watercolor collages liberally employ round motifs: on many spreads, the circular illustration on the right page is “cut” from the left, freeing up a circle of white space for text. Endpapers sport scores of holey doughnuts, many decorated nautically, and semaphore flags on the copyright page spell out “eat doughnuts.” Kirsch does not, however, take the opportunity to represent the racial diversity of 19th-century sailing crews.
Delicious! (period photograph, author’s note, timeline, selected bibliography of adult sources) (Picture book/biography. 6-9)Pub Date: May 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-544-31961-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
A worthy message delivered with a generous dose of inclusivity.
Sharing books brings children from multiple backgrounds together in this companion to Stacey’s Extraordinary Words (2021).
Again lightly burnishing actual childhood memories, voting rights activist and former gubernatorial candidate Abrams recalls reaching out as a young book lover to Julie, a new Vietnamese classmate shy about reading in English. Choosing books to read and discuss together on weekly excursions to the school’s library, the two are soon joined by enough other children from Gambia, South Korea, and elsewhere that their beaming librarian, Mr. McCormick, who is dark-skinned, sets up an after-school club. Later, Julie adds some give and take to their friendship by helping Stacey overcome her own reluctance to join the other children on the playground. Though views of the library seen through a faint golden haze flecked with stars go a little over the top (school librarians may disagree), Thomas fills the space with animated, bright-eyed young faces clustering intimately together over books and rendered in various shades beneath a range of hairstyles and head coverings. The author underscores the diversity of the cast by slipping scattered comments in Spanish, Wolof, and other languages into the dialogue and, after extolling throughout the power of books and stories to make new friends as well as open imaginations to new experiences and identities, brings all of her themes together in an afterword capped by an excellent list of recommended picture books. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A worthy message delivered with a generous dose of inclusivity. (Picture-book memoir. 6-9)Pub Date: Dec. 13, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-327185-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Disgusting and futile medical practices are always a pleasure to contemplate. Beccia, following closely in the spirit of The Raucous Royals (2008)—dry-witted artwork, conversational text, engaging historical detective work—asks readers to guess which “cures” may actually have helped a handful of ailments. Take a nasty cough, for example: Should you take a heaping helping of caterpillar fungus, frog soup or cherry bark? Common good sense will lead readers to wag their heads no when it comes to sprinkling mummy powder on a wound or drilling a hole in your head to relieve a headache, though some counterintuitive measures will come as a surprise success: spider web for an open wound, frog slime for a sore throat, moldy bread to treat a cut. The author provides intriguing background information on the cures—where they arose, why they were thought to be efficacious—and pulls more than one gem out of the nastiness, such as the property of silver to kill bacteria, giving birth to a familiar expression: “In the Middle Ages, wealthy-born babies sucked on silver spoons to protect against plague....” (note, bibliography) (Informational picture book. 6-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-547-22570-8
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2010
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