Further cements the 44th U.S. president’s status as a strong role model and an admirable human being.
A respectful profile of Barack Obama, from childhood to the White House.
Readers will have to learn elsewhere that Obama is still alive and a public figure, since the appended timeline ends in 2017, before much of the intended audience was born. Rappaport’s narrative ends even earlier than that, with approving references to his overseeing the 2011 assassination of Osama Bin Laden and the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive order. Still, along with laying out major events in his life (so far) in a narrative punctuated by direct quotes, she does illuminate some nuances in his character. She notes that he lived comfortably in Indonesia rather than in “hovels” like many of his neighbors and that he didn’t have the smoothest relationship with his distant, autocratic birth father. More significantly, the author links early lessons in Civil Rights history from Obama’s mother (“Five days a week, at four in the morning”) and guidance in treating others with compassion from his loving adoptive father. She also links his resolution of his early confusion about his own racial identity to his later firm, principled commitment to equality across lines of race and social class in the face of determined opposition from Republican opponents and “vicious assaults” from the media. Flashing that wide smile from an early age, he cuts a dignified figure in Engel’s illustrations, both in cozy family settings and posing before racially diverse crowds.
Further cements the 44th U.S. president’s status as a strong role model and an admirable human being. (author’s and illustrator’s notes, selected bibliography, source notes) (Picture-book biography. 6-9)Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9780316397834
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
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
Blandly laudatory.
The iconic animator introduces young readers to each “happy place” in his life.
The tally begins with his childhood home in Marceline, Missouri, and climaxes with Disneyland (carefully designed to be “the happiest place on Earth”), but the account really centers on finding his true happy place, not on a map but in drawing. In sketching out his early flubs and later rocket to the top, the fictive narrator gives Ub Iwerks and other Disney studio workers a nod (leaving his labor disputes with them unmentioned) and squeezes in quick references to his animated films, from Steamboat Willie to Winnie the Pooh (sans Fantasia and Song of the South). Eliopoulos incorporates stills from the films into his cartoon illustrations and, characteristically for this series, depicts Disney as a caricature, trademark mustache in place on outsized head even in childhood years and child sized even as an adult. Human figures default to white, with occasional people of color in crowd scenes and (ahistorically) in the animation studio. One unidentified animator builds up the role-modeling with an observation that Walt and Mickey were really the same (“Both fearless; both resourceful”). An assertion toward the end—“So when do you stop being a child? When you stop dreaming”—muddles the overall follow-your-bliss message. A timeline to the EPCOT Center’s 1982 opening offers photos of the man with select associates, rodent and otherwise. An additional series entry, I Am Marie Curie, publishes simultaneously, featuring a gowned, toddler-sized version of the groundbreaking physicist accepting her two Nobel prizes.
Blandly laudatory. (bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2875-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
