Beautifully crafted and compellingly celebratory.
Myra Viola Wilds turned to poetry after years of fine dressmaking ruined her eyesight.
Two of Wilds’ poems, “Thoughts” and “Dewdrops,” bookend the text. In spare verse laced with unforced rhymes, James stitches sparsely known details into a tender tapestry of a creative life. Like other Black Americans taking part in the Great Migration, Wilds left rural Kentucky for a city where she could learn to read and ply a trade. Though Wilds made dresses for those much wealthier than her, James describes her dressmaking as a creatively gratifying art form: “Sitting sewing gorgeous gowns / and fashionable frocks to wear to town. // …Formal for important places, / big ideas, and serious faces.” Extending James’ captivating verse, Ejaita depicts Wilds as heroic, a silhouetted figure towering over the landscape as she migrates from countryside to city. In one double-page spread, a gritty, charcoal-like texture blurs a dress’s colorful details, representing Wilds’ failing vision. In others, herringbone tweeds, bright colors, and hatched and contoured lines lovingly present Wilds’ dresses. As she shifts from dressmaking to poetry, her needle becomes a pen, and thread flows into letterforms. A brown child is portrayed and addressed at beginning and end—another set of bookends. James’ cogent historical note sets Wilds’ story within the fraught period between Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow laws.
Beautifully crafted and compellingly celebratory. (photograph) (Picture-book biography. 4-8)Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781951836535
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
A supplemental rather than introductory book on the great artist.
Frida Kahlo’s strong affection for and identification with animals form the lens through which readers view her life and work in this picture-book biography.
Each two-page spread introduces one or more of her pets, comparing her characteristics to theirs and adding biographical details. Confusingly for young readers, the beginning pages reference pets she owned as an adult, yet the illustrations and events referred to come from earlier in her life. Bonito the parrot perches in a tree overlooking young Frida and her family in her childhood home and pops up again later, just before the first mention of Diego Rivera. Granizo, the fawn, another pet from her adult years, is pictured beside a young Frida and her father along with a description of “her life as a little girl.” The author’s note adds important details about Kahlo’s life and her significance as an artist, as well as recommending specific paintings that feature her beloved animals. Expressive acrylic paintings expertly evoke Kahlo’s style and color palette. While young animal lovers will identify with her attachment to her pets and may enjoy learning about the Aztec origins of her Xolo dogs and the meaning of turkeys in ancient Mexico, the book may be of most interest to those who already have an interest in Kahlo’s life.
A supplemental rather than introductory book on the great artist. (Picture book/biography. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7358-4269-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: NorthSouth
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A unique angle on a watershed moment in the civil rights era.
The New Orleans school child who famously broke the color line in 1960 while surrounded by federal marshals describes the early days of her experience from a 6-year-old’s perspective.
Bridges told her tale to younger children in 2009’s Ruby Bridges Goes to School, but here the sensibility is more personal, and the sometimes-shocking historical photos have been replaced by uplifting painted scenes. “I didn’t find out what being ‘the first’ really meant until the day I arrived at this new school,” she writes. Unfrightened by the crowd of “screaming white people” that greets her at the school’s door (she thinks it’s like Mardi Gras) but surprised to find herself the only child in her classroom, and even the entire building, she gradually realizes the significance of her act as (in Smith’s illustration) she compares a small personal photo to the all-White class photos posted on a bulletin board and sees the difference. As she reflects on her new understanding, symbolic scenes first depict other dark-skinned children marching into classes in her wake to friendly greetings from lighter-skinned classmates (“School is just school,” she sensibly concludes, “and kids are just kids”) and finally an image of the bright-eyed icon posed next to a soaring bridge of reconciliation. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A unique angle on a watershed moment in the civil rights era. (author and illustrator notes, glossary) (Autobiographical picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-338-75388-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
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