The most optimal way to enjoy this book is reading along with the author’s PBS video—that synergy makes this small book sing.
Wonder why this poet and these words seem so familiar? Readers may have caught her on PBS’ “Brief but Spectacular” video series reciting it with the velocity and verve it richly deserves.
This book feels like the keepsake one gives to all the black girls and women in one’s life who missed the clip. And, much like a lot of spoken-word poetry, it is better recited out loud than read silently on the page. Yet in this rich historical moment in which black women are loudly and proudly claiming more and diversified ownership of their works and the media itself, this is as much a document of that moment as it is an emerging, beloved tome for black girls of all ages to read and share in classrooms and conferences, over brunch, on a lazy Sunday in autumn, or whenever or wherever one needs an assuring word. The illustrator’s work adds a sweet—if not a little messy—handmade quality to the book, as if each copy has been crafted as a personal gift, complete with a monotone woodcut look to the depiction of one of the most intimate aspects of black womanhood, hair-braiding. Set in uppercase type that emulates hand-lettering, key words and phrases are picked out in red or ocher type, complementing the spare highlights in the black-on-cream palette.
The most optimal way to enjoy this book is reading along with the author’s PBS video—that synergy makes this small book sing. (Picture book. 6-adult)Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-17372-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
A satisfying story of family, friendship and small-town cooperation in a 21st-century world.
Sent to stay with octogenarian relatives for the summer, 14-year-old Mike ends up coordinating a community drive to raise $40,000 for the adoption of a Romanian orphan. He’ll never be his dad's kind of engineer, but he learns he’s great at human engineering.
Mike’s math learning disability is matched by his widower father's lack of social competence; the Giant Genius can’t even reliably remember his son’s name. Like many of the folks the boy comes to know in Do Over, Penn.—his great-uncle Poppy silent in his chair, the multiply pierced-and-tattooed Gladys from the bank and “a homeless guy” who calls himself Past—Mike feels like a failure. But in spite of his own lack of confidence, he provides the kick start they need to cope with their losses and contribute to the campaign. Using the Internet (especially YouTube), Mike makes use of town talents and his own webpage design skills and entrepreneurial imagination. Math-definition chapter headings (Compatible Numbers, Zero Property, Tessellations) turn out to apply well to human actions in this well-paced, first-person narrative. Erskine described Asperger’s syndrome from the inside in Mockingbird (2010). Here, it’s a likely cause for the rift between father and son touchingly mended at the novel's cinematic conclusion.
A satisfying story of family, friendship and small-town cooperation in a 21st-century world. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: June 9, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-399-25505-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2011
Ephemeral—unlike the art here (some of it, at least) and those fondly remembered little books.
Chicken soup for fans of Golden Books, from the line’s editorial director.
Reasoning that hard times have come to America (“The chickens have come home to roost, and their names are Debt, Depression, and Diabetes”), Muldrow offers this book as palliative. She gathers single illustrations from 61 Little Golden Books and adds pithy captions as anodynes, such as “Don’t panic…” (beneath Tibor Gergely’s 1948 image of a dismayed child holding detached braids) or “Have some pancakes” (Richard Scarry, 1949). Though some of her advice has a modern inflection (“Don’t forget your antioxidants!”), the pictures all come from titles published between 1942 and 1964 and so, despite the great diversity of artistic styles, have a quaint period look. Not to mention quaint period values, from views of apron-wearing housewives and pipe-smoking men (or bears) to, with but two exceptions, an all-white cast of humans. Furthermore, despite the title’s implication, the exhortations don’t always reflect the original story’s lesson or theme; rather than “Make a budget—and stick to it!” the lad in Miriam Young’s 5 Pennies To Spend (illustrated by Corinne Malvern, 1955) actually used his hoard to help others in need.
Ephemeral—unlike the art here (some of it, at least) and those fondly remembered little books. (Picture book. 12 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-307-97761-8
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Golden Books/Random
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
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