EVELYN THE ADVENTUROUS ENTOMOLOGIST

A picture-book biography of Englishwoman Evelyn Cheesman emphasizes her perseverance in a man’s world during a particularly male-oriented era.

The first verso shows three light-skinned girls in pinafores, their activities demonstrating that girls in the 1880s were expected to be “quiet, clean, and covered with lace.” As with all the art, color and composition are appealing, but the humans are bland and one-dimensional. The text goes on to say that girls were certainly banned from “bug hunts.” On the facing page, a soiled little girl kneels in a forest glade, dragonfly on forefinger. The text reads, “But Evelyn went anyway.” That mantra is repeated when, years later, she becomes the first woman to run the London Zoo’s insect house; the third time involves world travel as an insect-collecting woman. Its fourth repetition unabashedly introduces the uncomfortable fact of colonialism. On the Pacific island of Nuku Hiva, the white woman stands in her standard outfit of crisp white shirt and safari hat, facing “villagers”—five brown-skinned people with grass skirts and spears—who tell her not to climb a steep cliff. “But Evelyn went anyway.” She is eventually recognized by Queen Elizabeth II for, among other things, “discover[ing] new species” in other populated parts of the empire. Perhaps it is by way of apology that further notes on Cheesman appear after an interview with contemporary female entomologist Alexandra Harmon-Threatt, who is African American.

Too glib for comfort.