This collective biography profiling the achievements of 20 aviation pioneers is ably written and informative but not particularly engaging. Handleman, a pilot and author of numerous aviation-history books, bookends the sequence of short biographies with a young boy named “Philsie,” presumably the author as a child, who dreams of the historical figures profiled. This awkward framing device is both superfluous and downright hokey. Included among the four-page profiles are portraits of such familiar pioneers as the Wright Brothers, Bessie Coleman, Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh, as well as the lesser-known likes of World War I ace Billy Bishop, Flying Tigers commander Claire Chennault and test pilot Jackie Cochran. Kodera’s pencil-drawn portraits of the aviators vary in quality. Though each profile is concise and informative, the author makes no attempt to connect these aviators to one another. A notable oversight is the lack of a bibliography and suggestions for further reading. (Collective biography. 9-13)
Pub Date: July 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-58980-570-5
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Pelican
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2009
A fast-paced and fact-laced tale framed in graphic panels puts a young orphan aboard a British frigate for a spot of blockade duty—climaxed by a brisk exchange with a French three-decker and the fiery destruction of an enemy shipyard. Rated “Boy, Third Class,”12-year-old Jack reports for duty with his lubberly head filled with heroic visions. Months of hard chores and gun drills later, he’s ready to measure up when the Defender sails into an ambush engineered by a turncoat crewmember. Though Weigel isn’t much for natural-sounding dialogue (“The Admiralty’s hoping to box up the Frenchies in their ports so they can’t mount an invasion of England,” explains an avuncular bosun) he fills the side margins on each page of his action-packed, realistically detailed cartoon scenes with pithy comments on naval argot and discipline, historical background, warfare, weapons and nautical lore. Though it may be a stretch for the episode’s likely audience to move on, as the author recommends at the end, to C.S. Forester and Patrick O’Brian, Jack’s adventures will leave readers in the proper tar-and-gunpowder frame of mind. (resource list) (Graphic fiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-399-25089-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2010
Newcomer Santoro’s story of the ice cream truck that pined for a more important role in life suffers from a premise that’s well-worn and still fraying—the person or object that longs to be something “more” in life, only to find out that his or its lot in life is enough, after all. Isaac the ice cream truck envies all the bigger, larger, more important vehicles he encounters (the big wheels are depicted as a rude lot, sullen, surly, and snarling, hardly a group to excite much envy) in a day, most of all the fire trucks and their worthy occupants. When Isaac gets that predictable boost to his self-image—he serves up ice cream to over-heated firefighters after a big blaze—it comes as an unmistakable putdown to the picture-book audience: the children who cherished Isaac—“They would gather around him, laughing and happy”—weren’t reason enough for him to be contented. Santoro equips the tale with a tune of Isaac’s very own, and retro scenes in tropical-hued colored pencil that deftly convey the speed of the trucks with skating, skewed angles. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8050-5296-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
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