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FRY BREAD

Name: FRY BREAD
Author: Kevin Noble Maillard
ISBN: 978-1-62672-746-5

A NATIVE AMERICAN FAMILY STORY

by Kevin Noble Maillard ; illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 22, 2019

Fry bread is much more than food, as this book amply demonstrates.

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A bright picture book invites kids to cook with a Native American grandma.

Kids of all races carry flour, salt, baking powder, and other supplies into the kitchen to make dough for fry bread. Flour dusts the counter as oil sizzles on the stove. Veggies, beans, and honey make up the list of toppings, and when the meal is ready, everyone is invited to join the feast. Community love is depicted in this book as its characters gather on Indigenous land across the continent—indoors, outdoors, while making art or gazing at the night sky. This is about more than food, referencing cultural issues such as the history of displacement, starvation, and the struggle to survive, albeit in subtle ways appropriate for young children. With buoyant, heartfelt illustrations that show the diversity in Native America, the book tells the story of a post-colonial food, a shared tradition across the North American continent. Broken down into headings that celebrate what fry bread is, this story reaches readers both young and old thanks to the author’s note at the back of the book that dives into the social ways, foodways, and politics of America’s 573 recognized tribes. Through this topic that includes the diversity of so many Native peoples in a single story, Maillard (Mekusukey Seminole) promotes unity and familiarity among nations.

Fry bread is much more than food, as this book amply demonstrates. (recipe) (Picture book. 3-8)

Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-62672-746-5

Page Count: 48

Publisher: Roaring Brook Press

Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

- PROFILES
Kevin Noble Maillard Discusses His Deeply Personal Debut Picture Book, Fry Bread

- PERSPECTIVES
Let’s Read Native in 2021

- PERSPECTIVES
In Praise of Diverse Books That Bring Joy

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PROFESSOR ASTRO CAT'S SPACE ROCKETS

From the Professor Astro Cat series

by Dominic Walliman ; illustrated by Ben Newman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 4, 2018

Energetic enough to carry younger rocketeers off the launch pad if not into a very high orbit.

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The bubble-helmeted feline explains what rockets do and the role they have played in sending people (and animals) into space.

Addressing a somewhat younger audience than in previous outings (Professor Astro Cat’s Frontiers of Space, 2013, etc.), Astro Cat dispenses with all but a light shower of “factoroids” to describe how rockets work. A highly selective “History of Space Travel” follows—beginning with a crew of fruit flies sent aloft in 1947, later the dog Laika (her dismal fate left unmentioned), and the human Yuri Gagarin. Then it’s on to Apollo 11 in 1969; the space shuttles Discovery, Columbia, and Challenger (the fates of the latter two likewise elided); the promise of NASA’s next-gen Orion and the Space Launch System; and finally vague closing references to other rockets in the works for local tourism and, eventually, interstellar travel. In the illustrations the spacesuited professor, joined by a mouse and cat in similar dress, do little except float in space and point at things. Still, the art has a stylish retro look, and portraits of Sally Ride and Guion Bluford diversify an otherwise all-white, all-male astronaut corps posing heroically or riding blocky, geometric spacecraft across starry reaches.

Energetic enough to carry younger rocketeers off the launch pad if not into a very high orbit. (glossary) (Informational picture book. 6-8)

Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-911171-55-3

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Flying Eye Books

Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

- BOOK REVIEW
PROFESSOR ASTRO CAT'S DEEP SEA VOYAGE
by Dominic Walliman ; illustrated by Ben Newman

- BOOK REVIEW
ASTRO KITTENS
by Dominic Walliman ; illustrated by Ben Newman

- BOOK REVIEW
PROFESSOR ASTRO CAT'S HUMAN BODY ODYSSEY
by Dominic Walliman & Ben Newman ; illustrated by Ben Newman

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RAPUNZEL

From the Once Upon a World series

by Chloe Perkins ; illustrated by Archana Sreenivasan ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 21, 2017

Adults wishing to expand the worldviews of their young charges beyond Eurocentric interpretations will find plenty of visual...

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A retelling of the classic fairy tale with India as its setting.

This latest addition to the Once Upon A World series tells the well-known story of the maiden with beautiful long tresses locked away in a tower by an evil witch and the prince who falls in love with her. As with Perkins’ Cinderella (illustrated by Sandra Equihua, 2016) and Snow White (illustrated by Misa Saburi, 2016), the text has been simplified for a younger audience, and the distinguishing twist here is its setting in India. The mixed-media illustrations of plants, animals, village life, and, of course, Rapunzel, the witch, and the prince come alive in warm, saturated colors. Other than the visuals, there is little to differentiate the story from traditional tellings. As always, it is still the prince who will eventually lead Rapunzel to her salvation by taking her to his kingdom far away from the witch, but that is the nature of fairy tales. The only quibble with this book and indeed with this series is the board-book format. Given the fact that the audience most likely to enjoy it is beyond the board-book age, a full-size book would have done more justice to the vibrant artwork.

Adults wishing to expand the worldviews of their young charges beyond Eurocentric interpretations will find plenty of visual delights in this one, though they’ll wish it were bigger. (Board book. 3-5)