A good introduction to the growing knowledge of the vital role slaves played in building Washington, D.C.
A slave in Washington, D.C., has the expertise to make possible the casting in bronze of the statue atop the Capitol Building.
As a child, Reid learned to work with clay and wood from an older slave on a plantation in South Carolina. Sold to Clark Mills, a sculptor, Reid mastered the skills required to create bronze statues. When Mills was commissioned to cast the plaster mold of the Statue of Freedom in 1859, he took Reid with him. To everyone’s consternation, the plaster model was in one piece, and the Italian craftsman responsible for this wanted more money to disassemble it into its constituent parts. It was Reid who carefully determined where the seams were so that the mold could be separated and moved to a foundry to be cast. During the Civil War, the statue was placed on the Capitol dome, and slaves in the District of Columbia were granted emancipation. Paperwork from Reid’s owner requesting promised payment for his manumitted slaves is reproduced on the endpapers. Lapham and Walton invent dialogue in their narration, but they make Reid’s work exciting and provide a good picture of what little is known of him. Christie’s paintings are characteristically powerful, more impressionistic than realistic. Sources and further reading would have been a plus.
A good introduction to the growing knowledge of the vital role slaves played in building Washington, D.C. (epilogue, authors’ note) (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-58536-819-8
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
Successful neither as biography nor sermon.
Our 16th president is presented as an activist for human and civil rights.
Lincoln resembles a doll with an oversized head as he strides through a first-person narrative that stretches the limits of credulity and usefulness. From childhood, Abe, bearded and sporting a stovepipe hat, loves to read, write and look out for animals. He stands up to bullies, noting that “the hardest fights don’t reveal a winner—but they do reveal character.” He sees slaves, and the sight haunts him. When the Civil War begins, he calls it a struggle to end slavery. Not accurate. The text further calls the Gettysburg ceremonies a “big event” designed to “reenergize” Union supporters and states that the Emancipation Proclamation “freed all those people.” Not accurate. The account concludes with a homily to “speak louder then you’ve ever spoken before,” as Lincoln holds the Proclamation in his hands. Eliopoulos’ comic-style digital art uses speech bubbles for conversational asides. A double-page spread depicts Lincoln, Confederate soldiers, Union soldiers, white folk and African-American folk walking arm in arm: an anachronistic reference to civil rights–era protest marches? An unsourced quotation from Lincoln may not actually be Lincoln’s words.
Successful neither as biography nor sermon. (photographs, archival illustration) (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8037-4083-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
Even very young dinosaur devotees will have no trouble finding better pickings elsewhere.
A pooch with, in previous outings, a penchant for straying touristically in various modern cities takes a quick scoot through the age of the dinosaurs, and after.
Having dozed off while his human buddy Pete is studying, Larry “wakes” beneath the feet of a huge, plant-eating sauropod and then flees from a T. Rex, going past various armored and feathered dinos. He goes on to get glimpses of Cretaceous fliers and swimmers, then trots through the Cenozoic Era to the Stone Age and, at last, his modern dinner. In illustrations that look like scraped screen prints, the prehistoric critters are recognizable in shape but monochromatically colored. The often low-contrast or pastel hues are as flat as the main narrative’s verse: “These guys look scary, / With armor and spikes. / But that’s just for defense; / It’s plants that they like.” Along with unexplained terminology (“Cretaceous-Paleogene Extinction Event”), the accompanying prose captions offer such awkwardly phrased gems as: “If something becomes buried under the right conditions, the evidence of it can last for millions of years.”
Even very young dinosaur devotees will have no trouble finding better pickings elsewhere. (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-57061-862-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sasquatch
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2013
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