Though the parts don’t coalesce into a stronger whole, the pieces are still worth reading.
A sprawling account of Sarah Elizabeth Ray’s fight for equality, set against the historical tapestry of the Detroit River.
Using an ambling narrative style that frequently calls back to earlier pages, Henderson and Gauch share vignettes of the river’s past. They begin with canoes steered by Indigenous people, then briefly delve into the river’s role carrying freedom-seeking enslaved people to Canada, before jumping forward to early-20th-century Detroit and the Boblo boats (named for Boblo Island Amusement Park) that ferried people to an Underground Railroad stop–turned–pleasure island. Each fascinating stopover could anchor its own book, but combined, they feel rather fleeting, and while the imagery of personified islands and cities is often lovely, some long passages are difficult to decipher. When readers finally meet Sarah Elizabeth Ray and the focus shifts to a single event, the book really sets sail. Sarah, a young Black graduate of secretarial school, plans to celebrate on Boblo Island. But after being asked to leave the segregated boat, she sues. With the help of a young Thurgood Marshall before he joined the Supreme Court, she wins, 10 years before the better-publicized Rosa Parks case. While the theme of interconnectedness is laudable, readers may be left wanting more information about this civil rights activist. Proud, unfussy digital illustrations are enlightening; some, such as a boat sailing down the gutter, segregating the passengers, are outstanding.
Though the parts don’t coalesce into a stronger whole, the pieces are still worth reading. (authors’ notes, sources) (Informational picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781646145805
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Levine Querido
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses.
An NBA star pays tribute to the influence of his grandfather.
In the same vein as his Long Shot (2009), illustrated by Frank Morrison, this latest from Paul prioritizes values and character: “My granddad Papa Chilly had dreams that came true,” he writes, “so maybe if I listen and watch him, / mine will too.” So it is that the wide-eyed Black child in the simply drawn illustrations rises early to get to the playground hoops before anyone else, watches his elder working hard and respecting others, hears him cheering along with the rest of the family from the stands during games, and recalls in a prose afterword that his grandfather wasn’t one to lecture but taught by example. Paul mentions in both the text and the backmatter that Papa Chilly was the first African American to own a service station in North Carolina (his presumed dream) but not that he was killed in a robbery, which has the effect of keeping the overall tone positive and the instructional content one-dimensional. Figures in the pictures are mostly dark-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-250-81003-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
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