Inspiring episodes from the lives of four admirable women.
True tales of daring and dedication.
Coronado highlights the bravery, fortitude, and persistence exhibited by four female lighthouse keepers. In 1869, Ida Lewis rowed out and rescued two sailors when their boat capsized in Rhode Island’s Newport Harbor. Juliet Nichols sounded a bell for hours to warn of fog in San Francisco Bay in 1906. In 1912, with low temperatures and icy waters cutting her and her husband’s lighthouse off from the mainland, “Aunt” Venus Parker rowed off to Chincoteague, Virginia, in search of supplies. And in 1925, Julia Toomey, a young native Hawaiian, helped keep the light burning at Oahu’s Makapu’u Point after her lighthouse keeper father’s death. The stories of these four intrepid heroes are exciting and well told in lively, smartly paced, and casually rhyming prose. The last few pages meaningfully expand the book’s reach, helping readers connect these exciting stories to their own lives as they face challenges and encouraging them to embrace both the big and the small moments of life. Thorough backmatter offers more context, with a page devoted to Julia Toomey. Dramatic, deep-toned artwork is a perfect match for the text, combining the stylized and the realistic and grabbing readers’ attention with unusual compositions in precisely detailed but sweeping graphic spreads.
Inspiring episodes from the lives of four admirable women. (author’s note, selected bibliography, quotation sources, photographs) (Informational picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9780063351837
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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
A picture book more than worthy of sharing the shelf with Alan Schroeder and Jerry Pinkney’s Minty (1996) and Carole Boston...
A memorable, lyrical reverse-chronological walk through the life of an American icon.
In free verse, Cline-Ransome narrates the life of Harriet Tubman, starting and ending with a train ride Tubman takes as an old woman. “But before wrinkles formed / and her eyes failed,” Tubman could walk tirelessly under a starlit sky. Cline-Ransome then describes the array of roles Tubman played throughout her life, including suffragist, abolitionist, Union spy, and conductor on the Underground Railroad. By framing the story around a literal train ride, the Ransomes juxtapose the privilege of traveling by rail against Harriet’s earlier modes of travel, when she repeatedly ran for her life. Racism still abounds, however, for she rides in a segregated train. While the text introduces readers to the details of Tubman’s life, Ransome’s use of watercolor—such a striking departure from his oil illustrations in many of his other picture books—reveals Tubman’s humanity, determination, drive, and hope. Ransome’s lavishly detailed and expansive double-page spreads situate young readers in each time and place as the text takes them further into the past.
A picture book more than worthy of sharing the shelf with Alan Schroeder and Jerry Pinkney’s Minty (1996) and Carole Boston Weatherford and Kadir Nelson’s Moses (2006). (Picture book/biography. 5-8)Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2047-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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