Watch a Disney film instead.
A girl grows up to be an instrumental Disney artist.
Mary Blair, nee Mary Browne Robinson, enjoys colors and painting in childhood. She dreams of being an artist and earns a spot at an art school. Later, she accepts a job at Walt Disney Studios. Over the course of her career, she paints Dumbo, creates concept art for iconic animated films (Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan), and helps create and design the world-famous Disney park attraction “It’s a small world.” Novesky’s plotline and prose about Blair’s massively influential achievements are oddly lackluster, reporting facts without spirit. Likewise, Lee’s cut-paper and gouache media have a flatness—neither cut paper nor gouache is recognizable on most spreads—and a lack of vitality. Blair’s a generic, tiny-waisted blonde white lady; characters smile almost unceasingly, even when the subject is poverty. This art is styled similarly to Disney art, but it lacks pizzazz. “It’s a small world” is glorified, with no examination of how it stereotypes and exoticizes race, nationality, and ethnicity; Lee’s illustrations reinscribe that very problem while Novesky romantically calls “small world” a celebration of “unity, goodwill, and global peace” leading to “colorful happily ever afters” (for whom?). Amy Guglielmo, Jacqueline Tourville, and Brigette Barrager’s Pocket Full of Colors (2017) is a far livelier Blair biography, although it also ignores racism concerns.
Watch a Disney film instead. (illustrator’s note, note from Mary Blair’s niece, further reading) (Picture book/biography. 5-8)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4847-5720-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Disney Press
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses.
An NBA star pays tribute to the influence of his grandfather.
In the same vein as his Long Shot (2009), illustrated by Frank Morrison, this latest from Paul prioritizes values and character: “My granddad Papa Chilly had dreams that came true,” he writes, “so maybe if I listen and watch him, / mine will too.” So it is that the wide-eyed Black child in the simply drawn illustrations rises early to get to the playground hoops before anyone else, watches his elder working hard and respecting others, hears him cheering along with the rest of the family from the stands during games, and recalls in a prose afterword that his grandfather wasn’t one to lecture but taught by example. Paul mentions in both the text and the backmatter that Papa Chilly was the first African American to own a service station in North Carolina (his presumed dream) but not that he was killed in a robbery, which has the effect of keeping the overall tone positive and the instructional content one-dimensional. Figures in the pictures are mostly dark-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-250-81003-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
Self-serving to be sure but also chock-full of worthy values and sentiments.
The junior senator from California introduces family and friends as everyday superheroes.
The endpapers are covered with cascades of, mostly, early childhood snapshots (“This is me contemplating the future”—caregivers of toddlers will recognize that abstracted look). In between, Harris introduces heroes in her life who have shaped her character: her mom and dad, whose superpowers were, respectively, to make her feel special and brave; an older neighbor known for her kindness; grandparents in India and Jamaica who “[stood] up for what’s right” (albeit in unspecified ways); other relatives and a teacher who opened her awareness to a wider world; and finally iconic figures such as Thurgood Marshall and Constance Baker Motley who “protected people by using the power of words and ideas” and whose examples inspired her to become a lawyer. “Heroes are…YOU!” she concludes, closing with a bulleted Hero Code and a timeline of her legal and political career that ends with her 2017 swearing-in as senator. In group scenes, some of the figures in the bright, simplistic digital illustrations have Asian features, some are in wheelchairs, nearly all are people of color. Almost all are smiling or grinning. Roe provides everyone identified as a role model with a cape and poses the author, who is seen at different ages wearing an identifying heart pin or decoration, next to each.
Self-serving to be sure but also chock-full of worthy values and sentiments. (Picture book/memoir. 5-8)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-984837-49-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
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