The story is an important one, but this vehicle can’t carry it.
Benjamin Sterling Turner, the first African American elected to the U.S. Congress from the state of Alabama, is the subject of this picture-book biography.
Rosner and Gaillard tell the story in Turner’s voice, opening with his enslavement and his “yearning for an education,” which “would come alive” during “the reading mornings” when he would sneak and listen to his owner, Mrs. Turner, read aloud to her children. Turner was a tenacious learner. Children who are familiar with stories about Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass will notice this parallel with his contemporaries. From this book, readers learn that Turner was an interesting man who amassed a fortune twice before his death, raised a son alone after his first wife was sold away, and was elected to Congress despite having been born enslaved. However, a problem that presents almost immediately is that this book is related in the first person and therefore reads as though it is an autobiography. The authors mention both this decision and their sources in an opening note, but their fairly unorthodox choice unacceptably blurs the line between the facts of Turner’s life and fictional embellishment. Drawing on secondary resources for detail and Turner’s few recorded writings for his style, the authors put words in his mouth; a representative example: “I cannot say [my owner] was altogether unkind.” With no specific citation for this or other assertions, it is impossible for readers to know whether this was authentically Turner’s feeling or authorial imposition.
The story is an important one, but this vehicle can’t carry it. (Picture book/biography. 5-10)Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-58838-356-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: NewSouth
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A sweet and endearing feathered migration.
A relationship between a Latina grandmother and her mixed-race granddaughter serves as the frame to depict the ruby-throated hummingbird migration pattern.
In Granny’s lap, a girl is encouraged to “keep still” as the intergenerational pair awaits the ruby-throated hummingbirds with bowls of water in their hands. But like the granddaughter, the tz’unun—“the word for hummingbird in several [Latin American] languages”—must soon fly north. Over the next several double-page spreads, readers follow the ruby-throated hummingbird’s migration pattern from Central America and Mexico through the United States all the way to Canada. Davies metaphorically reunites the granddaughter and grandmother when “a visitor from Granny’s garden” crosses paths with the girl in New York City. Ray provides delicately hashed lines in the illustrations that bring the hummingbirds’ erratic flight pattern to life as they travel north. The watercolor palette is injected with vibrancy by the addition of gold ink, mirroring the hummingbirds’ flashing feathers in the slants of light. The story is supplemented by notes on different pages with facts about the birds such as their nest size, diet, and flight schedule. In addition, a note about ruby-throated hummingbirds supplies readers with detailed information on how ornithologists study and keep track of these birds.
A sweet and endearing feathered migration. (bibliography, index) (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0538-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40.
From two Nobel Peace Prize winners, an invitation to look past sadness and loneliness to the joy that surrounds us.
Bobbing in the wake of 2016’s heavyweight Book of Joy (2016), this brief but buoyant address to young readers offers an earnest insight: “If you just focus on the thing that is making / you sad, then the sadness is all you see. / But if you look around, you will / see that joy is everywhere.” López expands the simply delivered proposal in fresh and lyrical ways—beginning with paired scenes of the authors as solitary children growing up in very different circumstances on (as they put it) “opposite sides of the world,” then meeting as young friends bonded by streams of rainbow bunting and going on to share their exuberantly hued joy with a group of dancers diverse in terms of age, race, culture, and locale while urging readers to do the same. Though on the whole this comes off as a bit bland (the banter and hilarity that characterized the authors’ recorded interchanges are absent here) and their advice just to look away from the sad things may seem facile in view of what too many children are inescapably faced with, still, it’s hard to imagine anyone in the world more qualified to deliver such a message than these two. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-48423-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
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