A poignant tale of courage and resistance and of long-standing cultural traditions.
An enslaved Black child reflects on the role hair braiding plays in her life and her community.
Nemy scatters seeds and pulls weeds in the fields. She observes a woman named Big Mother, who works hard in the sugar cane fields, cooking and telling stories before bed. When Nemy follows Big Mother to a shack one night, she sees her and other women braiding one another’s hair. Nemy joins them, and as her hair is braided, she remembers her own Nana. Surrounded by a loving, tight-knit community, she learns how women braid messages, information, and even seeds into their hair. One morning, the group—including Nemy—flees, the routes of freedom braided in their hair. They avoid danger and recapture until they can establish a new home, deep in the forests surrounding the plantation. In an author’s note, Duncan explains how she drew from real history—specifically the experiences of those enslaved in Colombia. Quietly tinged with hope, her narrative demonstrates how those in bondage used skills passed down over generations to find the liberty they desired. Moses’ digitally rendered art depicts intricate braid patterns; his dramatic use of color during the escape scene heightens the drama, bathing characters in deep blues as they make their way to freedom.
A poignant tale of courage and resistance and of long-standing cultural traditions. (Picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9781915244802
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lantana
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
Innocuous adventuring on the smallest of scales.
The Mouse and the Motorcycle (1965) upgrades to The Mice and the Rolls-Royce.
In Windsor Castle there sits a “dollhouse like no other,” replete with working plumbing, electricity, and even a full library of real, tiny books. Called Queen Mary’s Dollhouse, it also plays host to the Whiskers family, a clan of mice that has maintained the house for generations. Henry Whiskers and his cousin Jeremy get up to the usual high jinks young mice get up to, but when Henry’s little sister Isabel goes missing at the same time that the humans decide to clean the house up, the usually bookish big brother goes on the adventure of his life. Now Henry is driving cars, avoiding cats, escaping rats, and all before the upcoming mouse Masquerade. Like an extended version of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Two Bad Mice (1904), Priebe keeps this short chapter book constantly moving, with Duncan’s peppy art a cute capper. Oddly, the dollhouse itself plays only the smallest of roles in this story, and no factual information on the real Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House is included at the tale’s end (an opportunity lost).
Innocuous adventuring on the smallest of scales. (Fantasy. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-6575-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
Celebrated collaborators deliver another thoughtful delight, revealing how “making marks” links us across time and space.
The light-skinned, redheaded narrator journeys alone as flight attendants supply snacks to diverse, interspecies passengers. The kid muses, “Sometimes they ask me, ‘Why are you always going to the farthest planet?’ ”The response comes after the traveler hurtles through the solar system, lands, and levitates up to the platform where a welcoming grandmother waits: “Because it’s worth it / to cross one universe / to explore another.” Indeed, child and grandmother enter an egg-shaped, clear-domed orb and fly over a teeming savanna and a towering waterfall before disembarking, donning headlamps, and entering a cave. Inside, the pair marvel at a human handprint and ancient paintings of animals including horses, bison, and horned rhinoceroses. Yockteng’s skilled, vigorously shaded pictures suggest references to images found in Lascaux and Chauvet Cave in France. As the holiday winds down, grandmother gives the protagonist some colored pencils that had belonged to grandfather generations back. (She appears to chuckle over a nude portrait of her younger self.) The pencils “were good for making marks on paper. She gave me that too.” The child draws during the return trip, documenting the visit and sights along the journey home. “Because what I could see was infinity.” (This book was reviewed digitally with 9.8-by-19.6-inch double-page spreads viewed at 85% of actual size.)
Celebrated collaborators deliver another thoughtful delight, revealing how “making marks” links us across time and space. (Picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77306-172-6
Page Count: 52
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
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