The author of So You Want to Be President? (2000) opens a series of closer looks at turning points in the lives of future Chief Executives with this lively and handsomely designed account of Teddy—or “Teedy,” as he was then known—Roosevelt’s youth. She finds several watershed moments for puny, unathletic Teedy, from his discovery of the Great Outdoors, to a commitment to exercise inspired by this father’s observation that “you must make your body,” and an encounter with bullies that impelled him to take up boxing. She also highlights his love of natural history, introduces his parents and siblings, and chronicles the Roosevelt clan’s travels to Europe and Egypt. Faulkner captures Teedy’s boundless energy and determination in detail-rich scenes of the lad with his close, plainly well-to-do family, surrounded by his collections of animal specimens, and demonstrating his hard-won athletic prowess to a crowd of admiring relatives. Closing with a quick look at Roosevelt’s presidency and after, this makes a rousing tale of obstacles overcome. (afterword, bibliography) (Picture book/nonfiction. 8-10)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-399-23888-3
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2004
The author of Cod’s Tale (2001) again demonstrates a dab hand at recasting his adult work for a younger audience. Here the topic is salt, “the only rock eaten by human beings,” and, as he engrossingly demonstrates, “the object of wars and revolutions” throughout recorded history and before. Between his opening disquisition on its chemical composition and a closing timeline, he explores salt’s sources and methods of extraction, its worldwide economic influences from prehistoric domestication of animals to Gandhi’s Salt March, its many uses as a preservative and industrial product, its culinary and even, as the source for words like “salary” and “salad,” its linguistic history. Along with lucid maps and diagrams, Schindler supplies detailed, sometimes fanciful scenes to go along, finishing with a view of young folk chowing down on orders of French fries as ghostly figures from history look on. Some of Kurlansky’s claims are exaggerated (the Erie and other canals were built to transport more than just salt, for instance), and there are no leads to further resources, but this salutary (in more ways than one) micro-history will have young readers lifting their shakers in tribute. (Picture book/nonfiction. 8-10)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-399-23998-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2006
Ringgold’s biography of Rosa Parks packs substantial material into a few pages, but with a light touch, and with the ring of authenticity that gives her act of weary resistance all the respect it deserves. Narrating the book is the bus that Parks took that morning 45 years ago; it recounts the signal events in Parks’s life to a young girl who boarded it to go to school. A decent amount of the material will probably be new to children, for Parks is so intimately associated with the Montgomery Bus Boycott that her work with the NAACP before the bus incident is often overlooked, as is her later role as a community activist in Detroit with Congressman John Conyers. Ringgold, through the bus, also informs readers of Parks’s youth in rural Alabama, where Klansmen and nightriders struck fear into the lives of African-Americans. These experiences make her refusal to release her seat all the more courageous, for the consequences of resistance were not gentle. All the events are depicted in emotive naive artwork that underscores their truth; Ringgold delivers Parks’s story without hyperbole, but rather as a life lived with pride, conviction, and consequence. (Picture book/biography. 5-9)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-689-81892-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
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