Chockablock with timely themes and connections to recent world-shaking events.
An undersung public-health hero gets his due.
The mother and daughter co-authors, both descendants of their subject, trace the course of Wu’s career. He grew up with 10 siblings in a busy neighborhood populated by residents of Chinese and Indian descent in British-ruled Malaysia (then Malaya). Following medical training in Great Britain and a return to Malaysia (where he had trouble finding an official post due to racial discrimination), he accompanied a rescue mission to Harbin, a city in northeastern China whose Chinese and Russian residents had been struck by black plague. Thanks to quarantine measures and a multilayered face mask he developed (which met with resistance from racist fellow doctors), the outbreak was suppressed within a few months. He went on to become the first person of Chinese descent to earn a Nobel Prize nomination. That style of mask was widely used in both the flu epidemic of 1918 and, having evolved into the N95 mask, during the Covid-19 pandemic. It remains one of our least expensive, most effective measures against contagions: “When we wear a mask to stop a disease,” the co-authors conclude, “we are all heroes.” They deftly cast light on medical issues and the racism Wu faced, drawing parallels between past and present. In the generic, stylized illustrations, Wu stands out for his large black glasses and air of smiling confidence.
Chockablock with timely themes and connections to recent world-shaking events. (timeline, author’s note from Liu, photographs, websites, bibliography) (Picture-book biography. 6-9)Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9781536228984
Page Count: 32
Publisher: MIT Kids Press/Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40.
From two Nobel Peace Prize winners, an invitation to look past sadness and loneliness to the joy that surrounds us.
Bobbing in the wake of 2016’s heavyweight Book of Joy (2016), this brief but buoyant address to young readers offers an earnest insight: “If you just focus on the thing that is making / you sad, then the sadness is all you see. / But if you look around, you will / see that joy is everywhere.” López expands the simply delivered proposal in fresh and lyrical ways—beginning with paired scenes of the authors as solitary children growing up in very different circumstances on (as they put it) “opposite sides of the world,” then meeting as young friends bonded by streams of rainbow bunting and going on to share their exuberantly hued joy with a group of dancers diverse in terms of age, race, culture, and locale while urging readers to do the same. Though on the whole this comes off as a bit bland (the banter and hilarity that characterized the authors’ recorded interchanges are absent here) and their advice just to look away from the sad things may seem facile in view of what too many children are inescapably faced with, still, it’s hard to imagine anyone in the world more qualified to deliver such a message than these two. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-48423-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
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
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