A sensitive, intelligent addition to the music history canon.
Florence Price was the first African American woman to have her symphony performed by a major U.S. orchestra.
Written and illustrated by middle school students at the Special Music School at the Kaufman Music Center in New York, the book opens with a real-life mystery. In 2009, when a couple purchased a house near Chicago and found boxes of sheet music composed by Price in their attic, they posed the book’s titular question. The narrative then turns to Price’s life story. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1887, she was the daughter of a dentist and a piano teacher. Precocious, she made her performance debut at age 4, published her first musical composition at age 11, and graduated from high school at the top of her class. After completing her studies at the New England Conservatory, Price struggled to find an orchestra that would perform a Black woman’s symphony. The story goes on to recount her persistence, eventual success, and enduring legacy. The illustrations are rendered in mixed media with cut-paper elements. While the flat shapes are simple, the compositions are creative, maintaining interest with vivid background colors and changing perspectives. The text is informative, at times humorous, and the story flows well. The endpapers reproduce facsimiles—a page of Price’s sheet music and an old, faded concert program. The thoughtful backmatter includes a biography, photographs, discussion questions, selected works, and an afterword about the Special Music School.
A sensitive, intelligent addition to the music history canon. (Picture-book biography. 5-8)Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73653-340-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Schirmer Trade Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
The dynamic interaction between the characters invites readers to take risks, push boundaries, and have a little unscripted...
Reinvention is the name of the game for two blobs of clay.
A blue-eyed gray blob and a brown-eyed brown blob sit side by side, unsure as to what’s going to happen next. The gray anticipates an adventure, while the brown appears apprehensive. A pair of hands descends, and soon, amid a flurry of squishing and prodding and poking and sculpting, a handsome gray wolf and a stately brown owl emerge. The hands disappear, leaving the friends to their own devices. The owl is pleased, but the wolf convinces it that the best is yet to come. An ear pulled here and an extra eye placed there, and before you can shake a carving stick, a spurt of frenetic self-exploration—expressed as a tangled black scribble—reveals a succession of smug hybrid beasts. After all, the opportunity to become a “pig-e-phant” doesn’t come around every day. But the sound of approaching footsteps panics the pair of Picassos. How are they going to “fix [them]selves” on time? Soon a hippopotamus and peacock are staring bug-eyed at a returning pair of astonished hands. The creative naiveté of the “clay mates” is perfectly captured by Petty’s feisty, spot-on dialogue: “This was your idea…and it was a BAD one.” Eldridge’s endearing sculpted images are photographed against the stark white background of an artist’s work table to great effect.
The dynamic interaction between the characters invites readers to take risks, push boundaries, and have a little unscripted fun of their own . (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: June 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-30311-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
A jam-packed opener sure to satisfy lovers of the princess genre.
Ice princess Lina must navigate family and school in this early chapter read.
The family picnic is today. This is not a typical gathering, since Lina’s maternal relatives are a royal family of Windtamers who have power over the weather and live in castles floating on clouds. Lina herself is mixed race, with black hair and a tan complexion like her Asian-presenting mother’s; her Groundling father appears to be a white human. While making a grand entrance at the castle of her grandfather, the North Wind, she fails to successfully ride a gust of wind and crashes in front of her entire family. This prompts her stern grandfather to ask that Lina move in with him so he can teach her to control her powers. Desperate to avoid this, Lina and her friend Claudia, who is black, get Lina accepted at the Hilltop Science and Arts Academy. Lina’s parents allow her to go as long as she does lessons with grandpa on Saturdays. However, fitting in at a Groundling school is rough, especially when your powers start freak winter storms! With the story unfurling in diary format, bright-pink–highlighted grayscale illustrations help move the plot along. There are slight gaps in the storytelling and the pacing is occasionally uneven, but Lina is full of spunk and promotes self-acceptance.
A jam-packed opener sure to satisfy lovers of the princess genre. (Fantasy. 5-8)Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-35393-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
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