In 1893, when she was 34, Wellesley English professor Katharine Lee Bates took a train trip from Boston to Colorado Springs to teach summer school. She kept a diary, as she had since she was nine, and wrote down odds and ends of observation and poetry when she could. She saw Niagara Falls, stopped off to visit a friend and see the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where she marveled at Mr. Ferris’s Wheel and the gleaming white buildings. While in Colorado, she briefly glimpsed the top of Pike’s Peak, and the beginning of poem began to form. Combined with her other jottings, it would become “America the Beautiful,” set to a hymn by Samuel Ward. Using original sources, Younger makes a living character out of Bates, whose quirks and full-bodied charm gracefully flow from the letters and diary excerpts. Schuett’s illustrations, with their slightly exaggerated forms and saturated colors, capture not only the “fruited plains” and “alabaster cities” but vistas of Bates’s hometown of Falmouth, and intimate scenes of her cozy bedside table and the parlor where she welcomed guests. A wonderful historical endnote will be appreciated by those who think they are too old for picture books, or those working on school reports. Put this on display near Barbara Cooney’s Miss Rumphius (1982) and Michael Bedard’s Emily (1992). (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-10)
Pub Date: June 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-525-45653-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
A picture book worth reading about a historical figure worth remembering.
An honestly told biography of an important politician whose name every American should know.
Published while the United States has its first African-American president, this story of John Roy Lynch, the first African-American speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives, lays bare the long and arduous path black Americans have walked to obtain equality. The title’s first three words—“The Amazing Age”—emphasize how many more freedoms African-Americans had during Reconstruction than for decades afterward. Barton and Tate do not shy away from honest depictions of slavery, floggings, the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow laws, or the various means of intimidation that whites employed to prevent blacks from voting and living lives equal to those of whites. Like President Barack Obama, Lynch was of biracial descent; born to an enslaved mother and an Irish father, he did not know hard labor until his slave mistress asked him a question that he answered honestly. Freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, Lynch had a long and varied career that points to his resilience and perseverance. Tate’s bright watercolor illustrations often belie the harshness of what takes place within them; though this sometimes creates a visual conflict, it may also make the book more palatable for young readers unaware of the violence African-Americans have suffered than fully graphic images would. A historical note, timeline, author’s and illustrator’s notes, bibliography and map are appended.
A picture book worth reading about a historical figure worth remembering. (Picture book biography. 7-10)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8028-5379-0
Page Count: 50
Publisher: Eerdmans
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
Strong rhythms and occasional full or partial rhymes give this account of P.T. Barnum’s 1884 elephant parade across the newly opened Brooklyn Bridge an incantatory tone. Catching a whiff of public concern about the new bridge’s sturdiness, Barnum seizes the moment: “’I will stage an event / that will calm every fear, erase every worry, / about that remarkable bridge. / My display will amuse, inform / and astound some. / Or else my name isn’t Barnum!’” Using a rich palette of glowing golds and browns, Roca imbues the pachyderms with a calm solidity, sending them ambling past equally solid-looking buildings and over a truly monumental bridge—which soars over a striped Big Top tent in the final scene. A stately rendition of the episode, less exuberant, but also less fictionalized, than Phil Bildner’s Twenty-One Elephants (2004), illustrated by LeUyen Pham. (author’s note, resource list) (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-44887-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
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