Perfect for STEAM-infused reading and for grasping the value of serendipity.
An introduction to the life and innovations of William Henry Perkin (1838-1907), an English chemist who tried to find a cure for malaria but instead produced “purple for the people.”
Brown and Dunn establish context by showing a cloth maker’s dismay when Queen Victoria demands a crown of purple velvet: The challenge of producing it was one of the reasons the color was reserved for the rich and royals. Phoenicians had extracted the mucus of mollusks while the English soaked fabric in bark and berries, then urine to make it colorfast. Enter Perkin, son of a London carpenter. His professor at the Royal College of Chemistry, searching for an antidote during a malaria epidemic, gave Perkin a formula to attempt synthesizing quinine from coal tar. While the experiment failed, Perkin refined the scientific methodology and documentation and created—in a last-minute do-over—a gorgeous new color. The narrative is brisk, alliterative, and full of well-chosen details. Children will be intrigued at the ingenious and sometimes gross aspects of dye-making. In compositions brimming with pattern, Sanna controls an orderly palette, allowing the new hue to pop. Bright droplets are a design element throughout, framing key words, emanating from Perkin’s attic laboratory, squirting off the page to celebrate his lasting impact. The conclusion and extraordinarily rich author’s note and period visuals emphasize the White Englishman’s contributions to the fashion, medical, and scientific communities.
Perfect for STEAM-infused reading and for grasping the value of serendipity. (bibliography, experiment) (Picture book/biography. 6-12)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-368-03284-1
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
Blandly laudatory.
The iconic animator introduces young readers to each “happy place” in his life.
The tally begins with his childhood home in Marceline, Missouri, and climaxes with Disneyland (carefully designed to be “the happiest place on Earth”), but the account really centers on finding his true happy place, not on a map but in drawing. In sketching out his early flubs and later rocket to the top, the fictive narrator gives Ub Iwerks and other Disney studio workers a nod (leaving his labor disputes with them unmentioned) and squeezes in quick references to his animated films, from Steamboat Willie to Winnie the Pooh (sans Fantasia and Song of the South). Eliopoulos incorporates stills from the films into his cartoon illustrations and, characteristically for this series, depicts Disney as a caricature, trademark mustache in place on outsized head even in childhood years and child sized even as an adult. Human figures default to white, with occasional people of color in crowd scenes and (ahistorically) in the animation studio. One unidentified animator builds up the role-modeling with an observation that Walt and Mickey were really the same (“Both fearless; both resourceful”). An assertion toward the end—“So when do you stop being a child? When you stop dreaming”—muddles the overall follow-your-bliss message. A timeline to the EPCOT Center’s 1982 opening offers photos of the man with select associates, rodent and otherwise. An additional series entry, I Am Marie Curie, publishes simultaneously, featuring a gowned, toddler-sized version of the groundbreaking physicist accepting her two Nobel prizes.
Blandly laudatory. (bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2875-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
Inspiring fare for the next generation of world savers…and their younger sibs.
An international gallery of young eco-activists, assembled to demonstrate that it’s never too soon to get going.
Except for a group of unnamed Chinese children who set up an “ecological field” near their school to demonstrate water-conservation strategies, all of the entries here focus on the initiatives of specific individuals. These youngsters range from tree planters, like 9-year-old Felix Finkbeiner of Germany and 12-year-old Adeline Tiffanie Suwana of Indonesia, to Brooklyn “Earth Saver Girl” Wright of Atlanta, Georgia, an African American child who dresses as a costumed superhero and created an eco-comic at age 7. (Greta Thunberg presumably is well known enough not to be included.) Each is shown hard at work, usually lecturing or leading racially diverse groups of recruits in planting, composting, picking up litter, or recycling. Lirius depicts South African Hunter Mitchell snuggling up to a baby rhino and New Yorker Jordan Salama (both appear White) handing a banana to an orangutan in the wild…experiences that most young audiences are unlikely to have. Still, along with depicting plenty of rather more feasible eco-activities, the illustrations are strewn with undulating lines of helpful descriptive notes and cogent warnings about the consequences of destructive practices, from air and water pollution to poaching. Kirby also lays out credibly doable suggestions at the end, plus a list of relevant, child-friendly websites. (This book was reviewed digitally with 9-by-22-inch double-page spreads viewed at 80% of actual size.)
Inspiring fare for the next generation of world savers…and their younger sibs. (Informational picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4914-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Magic Cat
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
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