Delicious! (period photograph, author’s note, timeline, selected bibliography of adult sources) (Picture book/biography. 6-9)
Miller shares the true story of the invention of the doughnut with the hole in its center.
Hanson Gregory began his career at sea in 1844, at age 13, eventually captaining cargo schooners and clippers. As cook’s assistant in 1847, while preparing the usual deep-fried cakes for breakfast, Hanson had an idea. The sailors called the cakes “sinkers”: they were crisp at the edges but raw and greasy in the middle. Using the lid from a pepper tin to cut a hole in each cake’s center, Hanson fried a batch of cakes that “were brown, and sweet, and fully cooked. Sighs of delight rose above the noisy sea. A new breakfast tradition was born.” The author’s research unfolds a couple of colorful, alternate legends of the doughnut’s seagoing origins, since, naturally, “sailors like their stories bold.” Miller also recounts comments that Capt. Gregory made in a 1916 newspaper interview. “He laughed as he teased the reporter that he had invented ‘the first hole ever seen by mortal eyes.’ ” Kirsch’s charming watercolor collages liberally employ round motifs: on many spreads, the circular illustration on the right page is “cut” from the left, freeing up a circle of white space for text. Endpapers sport scores of holey doughnuts, many decorated nautically, and semaphore flags on the copyright page spell out “eat doughnuts.” Kirsch does not, however, take the opportunity to represent the racial diversity of 19th-century sailing crews.
Delicious! (period photograph, author’s note, timeline, selected bibliography of adult sources) (Picture book/biography. 6-9)Pub Date: May 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-544-31961-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
A succinct, edifying read, but don’t buy it for the pictures.
Abraham Lincoln’s ascent to the presidency is recounted in a fluid, easy-to-read biography for early readers.
Simple, direct sentences stress Lincoln’s humble upbringing, his honesty, and his devotion to acting with moral conviction. “Lincoln didn’t seem like a man who would be president one day. But he studied hard and became a lawyer. He cared about people and about justice.” Slavery and Lincoln’s signature achievement of emancipation are explained in broad yet defined, understandable analogies. “At that time, in the South, the law let white people own black people, just as they owned a house or a horse.” Readers are clearly given the president’s perspective through some documented memorable quotes from his own letters. “Lincoln did not like slavery. ‘If slavery is not wrong,’ he wrote to a friend ‘nothing is wrong.’ ” (The text does not clarify that this letter was written in 1865 and not before he ascended to the presidency, as implied by the book.) As the war goes on and Lincoln makes his decision to free the slaves in the “Southern states”—“a bold move”—Lincoln’s own words describe his thinking: “ ‘If my name ever goes into history,’ Lincoln said, ‘it will be for this act.’ ” A very basic timeline, which mentions the assassination unaddressed in the text, is followed by backmatter providing photographs, slightly more detailed historical information, and legacy. It’s a pity that the text is accompanied by unremarkable, rudimentary opaque paintings.
A succinct, edifying read, but don’t buy it for the pictures. (Informational early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: June 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-243256-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
The legions of fans who over the years have enjoyed dePaola’s autobiographical picture books will welcome this longer gathering of reminiscences. Writing in an authentically childlike voice, he describes watching the new house his father was building go up despite a succession of disasters, from a brush fire to the hurricane of 1938. Meanwhile, he also introduces family, friends, and neighbors, adds Nana Fall River to his already well-known Nana Upstairs and Nana Downstairs, remembers his first day of school (“ ‘ When do we learn to read?’ I asked. ‘Oh, we don’t learn how to read in kindergarten. We learn to read next year, in first grade.’ ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll be back next year.’ And I walked right out of school.”), recalls holidays, and explains his indignation when the plot of Disney’s “Snow White” doesn’t match the story he knows. Generously illustrated with vignettes and larger scenes, this cheery, well-knit narrative proves that an old dog can learn new tricks, and learn them surpassingly well. (Autobiography. 7-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-399-23246-X
Page Count: 58
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1999
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