Earnest but insubstantial, marred by mismatched art and subpar paper engineering.
A tribute to the original Renaissance man, with pop-up models and other special features.
The illustrations mix reproductions of actual works by Leonardo and some of his contemporaries with Geis’ own drab, flat daubs, and the combination is not a happy one. Fitting in sketchy biographical details as she goes and with an eye to demonstrating the artist’s legendary versatility, she devotes each of seven spreads to a particular project or topic. The huge, never-finished horse commissioned by the Duke of Milan, for instance, is represented here by a featureless brown pop-up of the clay model flanked by standing lines of indistinct onlookers that lean back even when the leaves are fully separated. Similarly, on a final spread anachronistically headed “Robots,” a simply rendered armored figure jerks an arm and a leg with the pull of a tab, but the author does not say whether Leonardo’s design was ever built, nor does she show or describe its actual mechanism. Much of the narrative and most of the small, murky reproductions are squeezed into peanut-shaped booklets. For “Portraits,” three reproduced paintings on flimsy loose sheets can be slid from a frame and exchanged, and based on one tiny partial sketch, readers are invited to glue together an “ideal city” like Leonardo’s from a set of larger punch-out sheets in a pocket at the end.
Earnest but insubstantial, marred by mismatched art and subpar paper engineering. (Informational pop-up. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61689-766-6
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
A fine introduction to a musical icon.
Silvey examines the life of Pete Seeger, whose folk music and social activism brought both worldwide acclaim and a decade of government persecution.
Born into a privileged family in 1919, Pete attended boarding schools from third grade, isolated from his divorced parents and family. He read voraciously and incubated his interests in the outdoors, journalism, art, and music; a high school teacher introduced him to the banjo. After dropping out of Harvard, Seeger pursued a winding path that included performing children’s concerts and cataloging folk music at the Library of Congress. The straightforward narrative chronicles Pete’s musical arc—from hardscrabble touring with Woody Guthrie and the Almanac Singers to the phenomenal success of the Weavers, who introduced Americans to folk and world music. Silvey links Seeger’s music with his commitment to social causes, from workers’ rights and civil rights to the antiwar and environmental movements. She skillfully illuminates Seeger’s 10-year ordeal during the tenure of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Surveilled, blacklisted, subpoenaed, arrested, tried, and convicted, the former Communist Party member was vindicated on appeal in 1962. Silvey’s afterword frankly acknowledges Seeger as a personal hero, avowing that her biographer’s neutrality was trumped by her research into Seeger’s unjust treatment by the FBI and HUAC.
A fine introduction to a musical icon. (photographs, quotation source notes, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-547-33012-9
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
An informationally sound profile but a lackluster narrative.
A fact-filled profile of Edwin and John Wilkes Booth.
The sons of a renowned Shakespearean actor, each enjoyed successful theatrical careers, though Edwin was more famous and admired as an actor. They were divided in their sympathies in the Civil War. John Wilkes spied and smuggled in his zealous support of the Confederacy, fantasizing about a plot to kidnap Lincoln before masterminding the assassination. Langston-George notes that the lives of the Lincolns and the Booths intersected multiple times. Robert Todd Lincoln and John Wilkes pursued the same woman, Lucy Lambert Hale, and Edwin Booth saved the life of President Lincoln’s eldest son when he pulled him off the tracks before an oncoming train. President Lincoln had also seen John Wilkes perform at Ford’s Theater. This story of the Booth brothers is sufficiently factual but lacks depth or nuance. Langston-George frequently uses quotes; sources are identified in the endnotes. What drove John Wilkes to embrace the Confederacy and white supremacy and to plot Lincoln’s assassination is not discussed. The emotional and psychological toll his crime took on Edwin is unexplored. A much more engaging, astute, and insightful profile of the Booth brothers can be found in James Cross Giblin’s Good Brother, Bad Bother (2005).
An informationally sound profile but a lackluster narrative. (afterword, photos, timeline, glossary, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5157-7339-9
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Capstone Young Readers
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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