GIRLS HOLD UP THIS WORLD
by Jada Pinkett Smith & photographed by Donyell Kennedy-McCullough
The beautiful and accomplished actress delivers a drearily earnest paean to girls in some of the clunkiest verse imaginable: self-esteem is rhymed with queen; lesson with blessing; better with together. You can probably figure out the text just from that. The didactic writing is matched by the shiny photos of girls (and a few women) of every shade and shape and ethnicity: playing, running, dancing, talking, meditating. You know how heartfelt all of this is when you see the author and photographers’ dedications to mothers, grandmothers, and daughters. But it is very hard to care. It’s not so ickily sentimental as Billy Joel’s picture book or as gratuitously moralistic as Madonna’s, but it has no reason to exist except for its author’s celebrity. (Picture book. 4-7)