bookshelf

THE PEOPLE COULD FLY

Name: THE PEOPLE COULD FLY
Author: Virginia Hamilton
ISBN: 0-375-82405-7

THE PICTURE BOOK

by Virginia Hamilton ; illustrated by Leo Dillon & Diane Dillon ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 9, 2004

A dreamy, powerful picture-book tribute to both Hamilton and the generations-old story.

bookshelf

“They say the people could fly. Say that long ago in Africa, some of the people knew magic. And they would walk up on the air like climbin up on a gate.”

Hamilton’s The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales (1985) won a Coretta Scott King Award, and the Dillons here reissue its heartbreaking title story with gorgeous, all-new, full-color paintings. Legend has it that some people in Africa could fly, but when they were shipped to America as slaves, they shed their black, shiny wings (reflected as feathers on the glossy black endpapers). When a mother and her baby are brutally whipped in the cotton fields, an old slave resurrects his magic and helps her and others fly away, free as birds, leaving the non-magical slaves behind to tell the tale. Like the story, the paintings are both hopeful and somber, and the slaves are as graceful and softly luminous as the slave owners are stiff, pinched, and cruel.

A dreamy, powerful picture-book tribute to both Hamilton and the generations-old story. (Picture book. 9-12)

Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2004

ISBN: 0-375-82405-7

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1985

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

- BOOK REVIEW
WEE WINNIE WITCH’S SKINNY
by Virginia Hamilton & illustrated by Barry Moser

- BOOK REVIEW
BRUH RABBIT AND THE TAR BABY GIRL
by Virginia Hamilton & illustrated by James E. Ransome

- BOOK REVIEW
TIME PIECES
by Virginia Hamilton

bookshelf

A LIKELY LAD

by Gillian Avery & illustrated by Julie Downing ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 30, 1994

bookshelf

Turn-of-the-century working-class England comes to life in this tale of an endearing and inquisitive boy. At six, Willy Overs, eldest son of a Manchester candy merchant, is marked as ``a likely lad'' when he defends his right to pick flowers in a public park. From that moment his father plans Willy's life, dreaming that he'll scale the corporate ladder and take a place among the city's celebrated men—and thereby win the competition between the Overs and their relations and rivals, the Sowters. But Willy doesn't share his father's fancy; he loves books and dreads his 13th birthday, when he must leave school and begin work at an insurance company. Larger-than-life characters and elaborate descriptions contribute to the classic feel of this gentle adventure, originally published in Britain in 1971. Like a Dickens protagonist, Willy stumbles into his fate with such disarming frankness that his escapades will make ``likely'' prospects for today's readers. This first US edition features appropriately humorous pencil illustrations. (Fiction. 10-12)

Pub Date: June 30, 1994

ISBN: 0-671-79867-7

Page Count: 300

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1994

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

- BOOK REVIEW
MARIA'S ITALIAN SPRING
by Gillian Avery

- BOOK REVIEW
MARIA ESCAPES
by Gillian Avery & illustrated by Scott Snow

bookshelf

VENUS

MAGELLAN EXPLORES OUR TWIN PLANET

by Franklyn M. Branley ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 30, 1994

bookshelf

Using the latest data from space probe Magellan, a master astronomy writer gives a detailed portrait of our ``sister planet.'' With intense heat, crushing pressure, and dense carbon dioxide clouds, Venus is no vacation spot, except perhaps for sulphur-breathing creatures made of diamond; but its existence does prompt intriguing questions about how Earth and Venus, nearly the same size and formed at the same time of the same primordial matter, could be so different. In exploring Venus's surface features, magnetism (none), and atmosphere, Branley ties together information on tectonic plates, Earth's core and mantle, and the use of radar for mapping to show why science is such a fascinating puzzle. One cavil: A color-enhanced ``map'' of Venus is included with no information on the extent of the area it covers, where north is, whether it's a projection, etc. Essentially the same information but more detailed than Simon's Venus (1992). Color photos, drawings, and computer images; spacecraft chronology; table of comparative Earth/Venus statistics; further reading; index. (Nonfiction. 9-12)