Winter brings all the passion he can muster to this picture-book biography of the Democratic presidential candidate, to whom he dedicates the book. Questions of identity form the theme of the brief account, as young Obama’s family forms, fractures, re-forms in Indonesia, only to dissolve again. Who am I? and Where do I belong? become the touchstone questions as the text confronts his ethnic identity—“Barack’s mother was Caucasian. His father was African. So what did that make Barack?”—and draws the conclusion that “no matter where he was, the world was his home.” Both text and illustrations take advantage of loaded images: One double-page spread places a grown Obama, head bowed, before the Washington Mall’s Reflecting Pool, the Lincoln Memorial (impossibly foreshortened, so its top is level with Obama’s head) in the background; one passage describes a rally in historically freighted Birmingham. There’s no effort at nonpartisanship, making Obama something of a Messiah figure come to save America at its darkest moment—but it sure is heartfelt. (author’s note) (Picture book/biography. 5-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-170392-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2008
Categories: CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CHILDREN'S HISTORY
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The life journey of the first African American to serve on the United States Supreme Court and the incidents that formed him.
Thurgood Marshall grew up in segregated Baltimore, Maryland, with a family that encouraged him to stand for justice. Despite attending poor schools, he found a way to succeed. His father instilled in him a love of the law and encouraged him to argue like a lawyer during dinner conversations. His success in college meant he could go to law school, but the University of Maryland did not accept African American students. Instead, Marshall went to historically black Howard University, where he was mentored by civil rights lawyer Charles Houston. Marshall’s first major legal case was against the law school that denied him a place, and his success brought him to the attention of the NAACP and ultimately led to his work on the groundbreaking Brown v. Board of Education, which itself led to his appointment to the Supreme Court. This lively narrative serves as an introduction to the life of one of the country’s important civil rights figures. Important facts in Marshall’s life are effectively highlighted in an almost staccato fashion. The bold watercolor-and-collage illustrations, beginning with an enticing cover, capture and enhance the strong tone set by the words.
A larger-than-life subject is neatly captured in text and images. (author’s note, photos) (Picture book/biography. 5-9)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6533-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CHILDREN'S HISTORY
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Strong rhythms and occasional full or partial rhymes give this account of P.T. Barnum’s 1884 elephant parade across the newly opened Brooklyn Bridge an incantatory tone. Catching a whiff of public concern about the new bridge’s sturdiness, Barnum seizes the moment: “’I will stage an event / that will calm every fear, erase every worry, / about that remarkable bridge. / My display will amuse, inform / and astound some. / Or else my name isn’t Barnum!’” Using a rich palette of glowing golds and browns, Roca imbues the pachyderms with a calm solidity, sending them ambling past equally solid-looking buildings and over a truly monumental bridge—which soars over a striped Big Top tent in the final scene. A stately rendition of the episode, less exuberant, but also less fictionalized, than Phil Bildner’s Twenty-One Elephants (2004), illustrated by LeUyen Pham. (author’s note, resource list) (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-44887-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S HISTORY
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