A breathtakingly gorgeous book that no reader should be without.
Two acclaimed creators have teamed up for an unqualified and unapologetic ode to Black hair.
An opening double-page spread of colorful planets, aligned in a star-spangled night sky, is followed by a depiction of Black women wearing crowns and beaming. (The backmatter explains that in 2019, Black women all over the world “made history as the titleholders of five major beauty pageants.”) In rhyming verse, Weatherford pays tribute to the textures, styles, and intricate patterns of Black hair, as well as adornments, coverings, and products used to care for it. Metaphors and similes abound (“Like waterfalls, our hair cascades,” “each strand a story without end”). Accompanying Weatherford’s potent words, Holmes’ stunning collage illustrations, in a plethora of textures, colors, and patterns, accentuate characters’ beautiful brown skin. Many scenes highlight the important role that hair care plays in bringing Black women and girls together, including a depiction of a dark-skinned mother reading a story to her baby; both sport matching Afros, with a bright yellow sunflower adorning each head. An especially striking image depicts a rainy day, bathed in blues and purples, with three women wearing a hijab, a headwrap, and a gele and carrying yellow and orange patchwork umbrellas, alongside a woman wearing a patchwork wide-brimmed hat—a stirring tribute to Black women’s beauty and verve.
A breathtakingly gorgeous book that no reader should be without. (glossary) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780763697945
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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A picture book more than worthy of sharing the shelf with Alan Schroeder and Jerry Pinkney’s Minty (1996) and Carole Boston...
A memorable, lyrical reverse-chronological walk through the life of an American icon.
In free verse, Cline-Ransome narrates the life of Harriet Tubman, starting and ending with a train ride Tubman takes as an old woman. “But before wrinkles formed / and her eyes failed,” Tubman could walk tirelessly under a starlit sky. Cline-Ransome then describes the array of roles Tubman played throughout her life, including suffragist, abolitionist, Union spy, and conductor on the Underground Railroad. By framing the story around a literal train ride, the Ransomes juxtapose the privilege of traveling by rail against Harriet’s earlier modes of travel, when she repeatedly ran for her life. Racism still abounds, however, for she rides in a segregated train. While the text introduces readers to the details of Tubman’s life, Ransome’s use of watercolor—such a striking departure from his oil illustrations in many of his other picture books—reveals Tubman’s humanity, determination, drive, and hope. Ransome’s lavishly detailed and expansive double-page spreads situate young readers in each time and place as the text takes them further into the past.
A picture book more than worthy of sharing the shelf with Alan Schroeder and Jerry Pinkney’s Minty (1996) and Carole Boston Weatherford and Kadir Nelson’s Moses (2006). (Picture book/biography. 5-8)Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2047-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
Pretty but substance-free—which is probably not how any of this book’s subjects would like to be remembered.
Inspired by Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s stand against the appointment of Sen. Jeff Sessions as U.S. attorney general—and titled for Sen. Mitch McConnell’s stifling of same—glancing introductions to 13 American women who “persisted.”
Among the figures relatively familiar to the audience are Harriet Tubman, Helen Keller, and Ruby Bridges; among the more obscure are union organizer Clara Lemlich, physician Virginia Apgar, and Olympian Florence Griffith Joyner. Sonia Sotomayor and Oprah Winfrey are two readers may already have some consciousness of. The women have clearly been carefully selected to represent American diversity, although there are significant gaps—there are no Asian-American women, for instance—and the extreme brevity of the coverage leads to reductivism and erasure: Osage dancer Maria Tallchief is identified only as “Native American,” and lesbian Sally Ride’s sexual orientation is elided completely. Clinton’s prose is almost bloodless, running to such uninspiring lines as, about Margaret Chase Smith, “she persisted in championing women’s rights and more opportunities for women in the military, standing up for free speech and supporting space exploration.” Boiger does her best to compensate, creating airy watercolors full of movement for each double-page spread. Quotations are incorporated into illustrations—although the absence of dates and context leaves them unmoored. That’s the overall feeling readers will get, as the uniformity of presentation and near-total lack of detail makes this overview so broad as to be ineffectual. The failure to provide any sources for further information should the book manage to pique readers’ interests simply exacerbates the problem.
Pretty but substance-free—which is probably not how any of this book’s subjects would like to be remembered. (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 30, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4172-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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