Elevates a conservationist who deserves to be far better known.
Seven years before Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) was published, Wilma Dykeman’s The French Broad (1955) illuminated the devastating effects of pollution.
Featuring striking illustrations that make use of clay, paper, fabric, and wire, this book tells the story of Wilma Dykeman (1920-2006), a lesser-known pioneering environmentalist. Text presented in small but clear hand-lettering recounts her solitary childhood in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where nature was her constant companion. In winter, when her mother read aloud, Wilma fell in love with “the sound of words.” When her father died, the 14-year-old Wilma “knew her life would never be the same.” After earning a college scholarship, she left her mother and the mountains she loved. Following college, she met James Stokely, and her life changed again. Together, they lived in the Smoky Mountains and researched the lives of those who lived along the French Broad River, uncovering the water pollution that plagued their neighbors along the river. The publisher who accepted Wilma’s book about the river wanted her to excise the pollution story; she refused. Her aim was to inspire everyone to clean up the water; she argued that factories and businesses could coexist with clean water, to everyone’s benefit. She wanted to “use words to fight injustice,” and she did, in columns, books, and speeches. The author’s note adds details that deepen this stirring story. The pictures, many double-page spreads, dominated by blues and greens, are enthrallingly fresh.
Elevates a conservationist who deserves to be far better known. (Picture-book biography. 6-8)Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781478870371
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Reycraft Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40.
From two Nobel Peace Prize winners, an invitation to look past sadness and loneliness to the joy that surrounds us.
Bobbing in the wake of 2016’s heavyweight Book of Joy (2016), this brief but buoyant address to young readers offers an earnest insight: “If you just focus on the thing that is making / you sad, then the sadness is all you see. / But if you look around, you will / see that joy is everywhere.” López expands the simply delivered proposal in fresh and lyrical ways—beginning with paired scenes of the authors as solitary children growing up in very different circumstances on (as they put it) “opposite sides of the world,” then meeting as young friends bonded by streams of rainbow bunting and going on to share their exuberantly hued joy with a group of dancers diverse in terms of age, race, culture, and locale while urging readers to do the same. Though on the whole this comes off as a bit bland (the banter and hilarity that characterized the authors’ recorded interchanges are absent here) and their advice just to look away from the sad things may seem facile in view of what too many children are inescapably faced with, still, it’s hard to imagine anyone in the world more qualified to deliver such a message than these two. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-48423-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
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
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