In spite of adversity, or because of it, Ida B. Wells served as a catalyst in the civil-rights movement. Wells was born three years before slavery’s abolition; when her parents and brother succumbed to yellow fever, she turned to teaching and writing, personally experiencing racism’s harsh realities. As a businesswoman and suffragette, Wells spoke against hatred’s social and legal ramifications, and her words garnered an international audience when her businessmen friends were lynched. Often, this picture-book biography relies powerfully on Wells’s own passionate words to tell her story: “In the past ten years over a thousand black men and women and children have met this violent death at the hands of a white mob. And the rest of America has remained silent.” Christensen’s swirling lines and colors blend, depicting her subject’s determination; the illustrations vary in composition, but vigorous cross-hatching provides texture and mood throughout. The design sets the staunch advocate’s quotations off from Myers’s accessible account, printing them in a typeface as bold as their speaker. (Picture book/biography. 7-10)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-027705-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2008
Spinning lively invented details around skimpy historical records, Taylor profiles the 19th-century chef credited with inventing the potato chip. Crum, thought to be of mixed Native-American and African-American ancestry, was a lover of the outdoors, who turned cooking skills learned from a French hunter into a kitchen job at an upscale resort in New York state. As the story goes, he fried up the first batch of chips in a fit of pique after a diner complained that his French fries were cut too thickly. Morrison’s schoolroom, kitchen and restaurant scenes seem a little more integrated than would have been likely in the 1850s, but his sinuous figures slide through them with exaggerated elegance, adding a theatrical energy as delicious as the snack food they celebrate. The author leaves Crum presiding over a restaurant (also integrated) of his own, closes with a note separating fact from fiction and also lists her sources. (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-58430-255-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lee & Low Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
An emotional entry point to a larger, necessary discussion on this complex and difficult subject.
The paths of four migrant children from different Central American countries cross as they enter Mexico, and together they continue their journey to the United States.
Though their reasons for undertaking the perilous journey are different, their hopes are not: They all hope for asylum in the U.S. Ten-year-old Alessandra, from Guatemala, hopes to reunite with her mother, who left four years ago. Thirteen-year-old Laura and her 7-year-old brother, Nando, from El Salvador, are going to live with relatives in the U.S. And 14-year-old Rodrigo, from Honduras, will try to join his parents in Nebraska rather than join a local gang. Along the way they encounter danger, hunger, kindness from strangers, and, most importantly, the strength of friendship with one another. Through the four children, the book provides but the barest glimpse into the reasons, hopes, and dreams of the thousands of unaccompanied minors that arrive at the U.S.–Mexico border every year. Artist Guevara has added Central American folk art–influenced details to her illustrations, giving depth to the artwork. These embellishments appear as line drawings superimposed on the watercolor scenes. The backmatter explains the reasons for the book, helping to place it within the larger context of ongoing projects at Baylor University related to the migration crisis in Central America.
An emotional entry point to a larger, necessary discussion on this complex and difficult subject. (Picture book. 7-10)Pub Date: July 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64442-008-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Six Foot Press
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
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