A small, inviting window into the life of Ralph Waldo Emerson and an inspiring tribute to a life’s dream realized.
The team behind creative picture-book biographies The Extraordinary Mark Twain (2010) and What To Do About Alice? (2008) turns its attention to 19th-century American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Emersonian quotations adorn the pages and endpapers (“Every spirit builds a house, and beyond its house a world….Build therefore your own world”), but the philosopher’s ideas and historical context are not the focus of this visually dynamic biography. Instead, this is largely the story of a natural scholar who loves his cozy home in Concord, Mass., so much that when it is damaged in a terrible fire, he mourns it like the death of a person. The illustrations—prancing across oversized pages—are cheery, inventive, bright and busy, depicting a contented-looking man in coat and tails basking in the magnificence of life. In bold and whimsical spreads, Emerson literally dives into books, strides across a U.S. map and, most dramatically, looms as a silhouette amid the flaming ruins of his beloved house. It’s hard to say whether this tale will inspire children to further investigation into the philosopher’s life and work, but the author’s note does help round out the portrait, including Emerson’s friendships with Henry David Thoreau and Louisa May Alcott.
A small, inviting window into the life of Ralph Waldo Emerson and an inspiring tribute to a life’s dream realized. (author’s note, philosophical prompts, source notes, acknowledgments) (Picture book/biography. 8-12)Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-35088-4
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
A real gem.
A 10-year old girl learns to adjust to a strange town, makes some fascinating friends, and fills the empty space in her heart thanks to a big old stray dog in this lyrical, moving, and enchanting book by a fresh new voice.
India Opal’s mama left when she was only three, and her father, “the preacher,” is absorbed in his own loss and in the work of his new ministry at the Open-Arms Baptist Church of Naomi [Florida]. Enter Winn-Dixie, a dog who “looked like a big piece of old brown carpet that had been left out in the rain.” But, this dog had a grin “so big that it made him sneeze.” And, as Opal says, “It’s hard not to immediately fall in love with a dog who has a good sense of humor.” Because of Winn-Dixie, Opal meets Miss Franny Block, an elderly lady whose papa built her a library of her own when she was just a little girl and she’s been the librarian ever since. Then, there’s nearly blind Gloria Dump, who hangs the empty bottle wreckage of her past from the mistake tree in her back yard. And, Otis, oh yes, Otis, whose music charms the gerbils, rabbits, snakes and lizards he’s let out of their cages in the pet store. Brush strokes of magical realism elevate this beyond a simple story of friendship to a well-crafted tale of community and fellowship, of sweetness, sorrow and hope. And, it’s funny, too.
A real gem. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7636-0776-2
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
SEEN & HEARD
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