I’ve read a number of the books in the LITTLE PEOPLE BIG DREAMS biography collection for children. The series consists of very short, accessible worksI’ve read a number of the books in the LITTLE PEOPLE BIG DREAMS biography collection for children. The series consists of very short, accessible works which highlight the lives of people who have made important contributions to the world and have accomplished great things in spite of significant obstacles.
It’s entirely understandable why Wilma Rudolph’s story is part of this series. Born in Tennessee in 1940, she was a tiny, premature baby who caught almost every infectious disease going. At age four, she contracted polio, which caused her left leg to become twisted and turned in. Doctors pronounced that she’d never walk again; Mrs. Rudolph said that her daughter would indeed walk. Wilma believed her and was as determined as her parent to make this happen. The two regularly made a 100-mile round trip by bus to Nashville for Wilma to receive medical treatment. This book doesn’t explain (though it should) that Nashville was the location of the nearest hospital (an institution for Blacks) that would actually care for her. The biography does inform young readers about the segregation on public buses, however. As African Americans, Wilma and her mother had to sit at the back of the vehicle. The book also fails to mention that Wilma was excluded from attending school for a few years because of her disability and frequent illnesses.
At the Nashville hospital, Wilma received physiotherapy for her leg. At home, her 19 siblings would, over the next five years, help out with treatments, massaging her leg four times a day. At some point Wilma was fitted with a heavy steel brace, which she was able to discard by age nine.
Once free of her brace, Wilma began to play basketball, which she’d always loved. She excelled at the game and was spotted by a coach who invited her to participate in a college program for athletes. (The book does not report just how important track-and-field-coach Ed Temple of Tennessee State University was in Wilma’s life. It was with his support that she gained a college scholarship and had access to the training that allowed her to realize her extraordinary potential.)
True to its mandate, the book highlights Wilma’s accomplishments at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics (a bronze in the 400 meter relay) and at the 1960 Rome Olympics (gold medals in the 100 and 200 meter dashes and the 400 meter relay). It rightly points out Wilma showed that sprinting wasn’t something just for boys, and it appropriately observes that she had “fought against all odds to become the fastest woman in the world.”
In the final pages, there’s a small timeline of Wilma’s life and three suggestions for further reading—including Kathleen Krull’s superb picture book Wilma Unlimited, a book that is in an entirely different league from this one.
While I acknowledge the value of a series that gives brief, easy-to-read summaries of important lives, I have consistently found the writing in these books unremarkable and less than inspiring. Here and elsewhere, the illustrations are purely perfunctory. Wilma doesn’t even look like Wilma, and the scenes we see her in look modern and sanitized. Forget artistic merit; there isn’t even an attempt to be historically accurate or realistic in the pictures that accompany the text.
Having said all of this, series books help kids to gain confidence as readers. The brevity and familiar formula that characterize LITTLE PEOPLE BIG DREAMS can be relied on to encourage further reading of the other short biographies offered by Vegara, the author and creator of this now sizeable collection of books....more
This a brief, accessible, and attractive short biography of Anne Frank, evidently written for kids from about 10 to 13 years of age. Pages are mostly This a brief, accessible, and attractive short biography of Anne Frank, evidently written for kids from about 10 to 13 years of age. Pages are mostly cheerful pastel colours and there are many photos. The text itself reads almost like a little novel. The focus is on Anne’s optimism and faith in humanity, which I’ve personally never completely bought into.
There are, however, problems. Dysentery is incorrectly spelled, and the author incorrectly states that Anne and her sister Margot’s scabies, contracted in a concentration camp, were due to lice. Scabies infestation is caused by mites, not lice.
When one sees errors of this kind, the tendency is to doubt the accuracy of other details in the book. I didn’t feel up to fact checking the rest of the book, but I think potential readers should be aware it may not be reliable. I believe the book would also have benefited from a glossary. At the very least, some information required more explanatory detail for the target audience.
Verdict: There are better books about Anne out there....more
Wider has written a fine young adult introduction to the life and art of the German-Jewish artist, Charlotte Salomon, who died at the age of 26 in AusWider has written a fine young adult introduction to the life and art of the German-Jewish artist, Charlotte Salomon, who died at the age of 26 in Auschwitz. She was five-months pregnant. Wider presents the events of Charlotte’s story mostly in chronological order. She includes many images of Salomon’s modernist paintings (influenced by Matisse, van Gogh, and Chagall, among others)—all of them from the artist’s masterpiece, LIFE? OR THEATRE?, an autobiographical compilation of images (some presented in comic-book-like strips), words, and even directions about thematic music (from Bach and Bizet to folksongs) that should accompany the viewing and reading of the text. Salomon was heard humming as she painted in seclusion in a hotel room in southern France.
Charlotte’s short life was profoundly tragic. In 1926, when she was nine, her mother died—of the flu, she was told. As a young woman, she would learn that innumerable members of her maternal family, including her mother and aunt, had ended their own lives. Determined to become an artist from a young age, Charlotte attended art school in Berlin until the restrictions against Jews made this impossible. She fell in love with Alfred Wolfsohn, a much older man, voice coach, and possible lover of her opera-star stepmother, Paula. Having survived a highly traumatic experience in World War I, Wolfsohn had his own demons. His appearance in the young artist’s life was a critical one. His remarks about her painting gave her reason to believe in herself and a way to cope with the depression that increasingly loomed.
The darkness wasn’t only within; the dangers of Nazism were omnipresent and intensifying. After Kristallnacht in 1938, Charlotte’s father, Dr. Albert Salomon, a prominent Berlin surgeon and university professor, had been seized and taken to Sachsenhausen, a Nazi labour camp. Paula used her many connections to have him released. He ultimately was, weighing a mere 80 pounds. At this point, Albert and Paula knew the family must flee Berlin. Before they themselves escaped to Amsterdam, they first sent their daughter off to southern France, which was then unoccupied, to stay with her maternal grandparents, a disturbed and disturbing elderly couple. A condition of Charlotte’s visa was that she was to be caring for the pair. This was no ordinary task. Her grandmother became increasingly suicidal as Hitler’s troops advanced, finally succeeding in ending her life, and Charlotte was left with her brute of a grandfather, whose abuse was not only emotional but likely sexual as well. Beyond getting Charlotte to physical safety, Wider doesn’t comment on what her parents knew about the stability of the grandparents. Had Paula and Albert been aware of the dysfunction in these people and the deleterious impact it could have on an introverted, sensitive, psychologically vulnerable young woman?
Wider shows how Salomon’s passion for art was intensely therapeutic, saving her from a dark emotional inheritance and the torment of dealing with her grandfather. The young woman also received psychological support from a wealthy German-American woman, Ottilie Moore, who took Jewish refugee children into L’Hermitage, her villa in the south of France. Ottilie was an art collector. Recognizing Charlotte’s talent, she purchased, framed, and hung the artist’s work in her home, further boosting the young woman’s confidence. She also gave Salomon a place of refuge in which to escape her grandfather and to paint. In the end, LIFE? OR THEATRE would be dedicated to Ottilie.
Before Charlotte was transported to Auschwitz with Alexander Nagler, —Ottilie’s friend and former lover, whom Charlotte had married—she gave the entire bundle of her paintings to Dr. Georges Miridis, a family friend. “Keep the package safe” she told him; “It’s my whole life.” Yes, it was. It was not only a record of her brief, intense existence but also the very thing that had kept her alive.
While I’ve looked at a few articles on Charlotte Salomon, I haven’t yet read LIFE? OR THEATRE? or Mary Lower Felstiner’s “remarkable” biography of Salomon, TO PAINT HER LIFE. As a result, I’m unable to judge how well author Susan Wider has adapted the details of Salomon’s life and art for a young adult audience. My impression, however, is that this is a reliable work. It doesn’t appear to downplay or avoid the tragedy and horror of Charlotte’s life. It also celebrates the artist’s passionate commitment to creative work that prevented her from falling into complete despair. I recommend it....more
In the afterword to her picture book that focuses on the childhood literary creativity of the four Brontë siblings, author Sara O’Leary opines: “It haIn the afterword to her picture book that focuses on the childhood literary creativity of the four Brontë siblings, author Sara O’Leary opines: “It has become commonplace to think of the lives of the Brontë children as having been sad and mournful but I think they were quite lively, happy children.” This view, even if I’m not sure I agree with it, colours O’Leary’s story about how Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne came to write little books, inspired by their father’s gift of wooden toy soldiers to nine-year-old Branwell. Each of the siblings took and named a soldier, and they created a series of adventures for them, recorded in minuscule print on tiny toy-soldier-sized papers, which were then hand-sewn together. This creative enterprise began in 1826, a year after their sisters Maria and Elizabeth had died of tuberculosis and five years after the death of their mother from cancer.
O’Leary manages to communicate a remarkable amount about the young Brontës in very few pages—their love of both their pets and the Yorkshire moors, their reticence around visitors to the Parsonage in Haworth, Yorkshire, and their being a world almost entirely unto themselves. Briony May Smith’s delicate, muted-colour illustrations provide an attractive accompaniment to the text, though I found her depiction of the children themselves a bit too cute and cartoonish for my taste.
The author includes instructions for young readers to make their own books. I’m not sure how useful or necessary these are. Making little books is fairly common practice in early primary classrooms, and most young readers would already know what to do. The story is followed by an author’s note, a timeline of key events in the Brontës’ lives, and a bibliography.
This is a nice enough book. For adult readers familiar with the Brontës, there is of course nothing new here. I see the book as having more appeal to children’s librarians than the young readers they serve.
A compelling and fascinating mixture of biography, memoir, and history, Wodin's book tells of her search to understand her mentally ill mother, EvgeniA compelling and fascinating mixture of biography, memoir, and history, Wodin's book tells of her search to understand her mentally ill mother, Evgenia Yakovleva Ivashchenko, a Ukrainian forced labourer in Germany, whose life was "shredded" by the Stalinist and Nazi regimes. Over six decades after her mother's suicide by drowning in Germany's Regnitz River, Wodin, now in her 70s, plugged Evgenia's name into a Russian internet search engine, something she'd done multiple times before with little to show for it. This time, though, something extraordinary happened. She came upon an Azov Greek forum for those with family links to Mariupol. The online group was run by by an engineer originally from the southern Ukrainian city who now lived in Russia. Konstantin, an indefatigable and passionate investigator, aided Wodin in going back some generations in her mother's family history, allowing her to construct a maternal family tree.
Wodin would learn of her roots in the nobility, the intelligentsia, and the merchant class and how these details factored into two members of her family, her grandfather and her mother's older sister, Lidia, being exiled as enemies of the people. She'd also find an opera singer uncle (a card-carrying Communist Party member), his eccentric physician daughter whose life had been dedicated to his care, and another cousin's murderous son, a bizarre man who'd smothered his own mother. This and other information Wodin stumbled upon was at times deeply unsettling, enough to make her question what she'd gotten herself into.
Wodin's is a richly detailed, gripping book, which is necessarily speculative at times. Wodin observes that the experiences of forced slave labourers from the East, "untermenschen" (non-Aryan, racially inferior people)--many of them Ukrainian and regarded as only slightly superior to Jews--are often marginalia to the Holocaust. This exceptional work made me aware of lives I'd never before considered. It deserves to be widely read.
I am grateful to Michigan State University Press and to Net Galley for providing me with a digital copy for review purposes....more
I read The Diary of Anne Frank when I was twelve or thirteen years old. At that time, if there were other memoirs or nonfiction works for childrenI read The Diary of Anne Frank when I was twelve or thirteen years old. At that time, if there were other memoirs or nonfiction works for children about the Holocaust, I wasn’t aware of them. I knew Anne’s diary was an important historical document and that its author had tragically died from typhus in Bergen-Belsen just weeks before the camp was liberated. I felt genuinely ashamed that I didn’t like the famous work; it was overly long and often tedious. Its author was self-absorbed and boy-crazy and reminded me of schoolgirls I preferred to avoid. I believed that the thoughts of Anne’s much-complained-about older sister, Margot, might have actually been more interesting to read. I have never returned to the diary—although hearing the writer Francine Prose being interviewed about its literary merit made me briefly entertain the idea of giving the book another try.
For many young readers, an actual biography of Anne Frank, like this brief one from 2004 by Lois Metzger, might provide a better introduction to the Holocaust than Anne’s famous diary. For one thing, it offers historical, geographical, and political context in accessible language, giving a better overall sense of the times and conditions than a diary can. For another, it spares the reader from “all Anne almost all the time.” The fact is: Anne really could be insufferable — harsh and egocentric. In synthesizing a number of adult works about her (which are listed at the back of the book), Metzger gives young readers a gift. She provides them with the perspectives of others. For example, she paints a sympathetic portrait of Edith Frank, who was breaking under the strain of the dire situation and evidently depressed. Metzger frequently notes the observations of Miep Gies, the devoted employee and friend of the Franks, who was critical in their managing as long as they did in the Secret Annex. Some of Anne’s girlhood friends who survived the war are also quoted. The inclusion of multiple points of view helps to provide a more balanced impression of who Anne was as a person. They work together to make an empathetic narrative nonfiction that sometimes reads like a novel.
Metzger also addresses the psychological importance of the diary to Anne. It was an outlet that allowed the young girl a place for making sense of afflictive emotions and extremely stressful circumstances. Metzger selects the more insightful of Anne’s observations and makes the case that these reflect the young diarist’s emotional maturation and growing commitment to writing as a calling. I’d have to go back to the original work to see how well founded that interpretation is.
There are now many alternatives to Anne Frank’s diary. Metzger’s is a worthy one....more
Acclaimed and prolific children’s author Kathleen Krull didn’t live to see the release of her final work, a picture book about Peace Pilgrim, a woman Acclaimed and prolific children’s author Kathleen Krull didn’t live to see the release of her final work, a picture book about Peace Pilgrim, a woman who crossed the United States seven times, even travelling to Canada and Mexico. (The book—at least the edition I read—comes out on March 23, and Krull died in January 2021.) The copyright page identifies the book’s intended audience as children in kindergarten to grade one, but I think this picture-book biography would be better suited to students in grades two to four, as they have a basic understanding of geography and some notion of war and its human cost. Having said that, I will note that Krull’s book is extremely general, presenting only the vaguest outline of the story of Peace Pilgrim (born Mildred Lizette Norman in 1908). In that regard, it does seem geared to the youngest school-aged kids.
According to Krull’s telling, the woman who changed her name to Peace Pilgrim, was once a lover of fancy shoes and clothes. One evening, she was taking a walk in a moonlit forest when she had a sort of epiphany: the way she’d been living her life lacked meaning. She had a brainwave about walking 25,000 miles to spread a message of peace; she would challenge people to reconsider their view of war as just an ordinary part of life. She prepared herself for fifteen years, regularly walking long distances and learning how to survive in the natural landscape. Her first “pilgrimage” began at the Rose Parade in Pasadena California on a New Year’s Day. Krull identifies no dates in this book. Peace Pilgrim is depicted as an older woman in the illustrations, and the images of the cars give a young audience clues that the woman’s journey(s) occurred some years ago. Readers learn a few of the places Peace Pilgrim travelled, that she often spoke at schools and houses of worship, and that she made many friends. People she met along the way generously offered her meals and places to sleep. Other times she slept on beaches, in forests, and, in fact, anywhere that offered shelter.
At the end of the book, Krull provides a very short biographical note, which answers a few questions about this unusual woman. The author also lists two sources for further reading. Although attractively accompanied by artist Annie Bowler’s bright but gentle pastel-coloured illustrations, many with circular motifs, the text is a bit too sketchy to be satisfying. I imagine that teachers might find this book useful for presenting and practising the reading strategy of questioning, as there is so much missing from Krull’s account of Peace Pilgrim’s life, including Mildred Norman’s motivation for taking up her itinerant life. This is certainly not my favourite work by Krull. It’s too vague, and, though clearly intended to inspire, the character of the central figure doesn’t really come across on the page.
For anyone interested in reading a bit more about Norman’s life, storyteller and archeologist Debra Eve’s website, Later Bloomer, is helpful. There’s a nice piece there about Peace Pilgrim, complete with photographs and her last radio interview: https://laterbloomer.com/peace-pilgrim/...more
In this competently written work—a combination of biography, memoir, and social history— Justine Cowan reflects on the life of her difficulRating: 3.5
In this competently written work—a combination of biography, memoir, and social history— Justine Cowan reflects on the life of her difficult, emotionally disturbed mother, Eileen, the “Dorothy Soames” of the book’s title. Shortly after her birth in January 1932, the infant Eileen was placed by Lena Weston, her unwed mother, in London’s Foundling Hospital, where she was promptly renamed Dorothy Soames. The institution, dating back to the 1700s, was founded by British sailor, shipbuilder, and philanthropist Thomas Coram as a refuge for illegitimate children. The original idea was that these poor unfortunates would be clothed, fed, housed, and trained for service (to the wealthy)—the boys, for a life at sea; the girls, for domestic service. Cowan demonstrates that although Dorothy’s bodily and medical needs were met, she and the other foundlings were deprived of essential emotional support and affection. In fact, some of the staff—most of whom were unmarried older women unable to find better employment—were downright sadistic. A teacher, Miss Woodword, was a particular terror to Dorothy from the time the girl was eight or nine years old. This woman beat Dorothy publicly and mercilessly. Once she even removed her from class for some mysterious infraction, only to throw her in the deep end of the on-site pool, using the long rescue pole to dunk the girl back under the water each time she struggled to the surface. The Foundling Hospital’s matron, Miss Wright, was another menacing figure. Carrying a leather strap, she regularly patrolled the corridors of the institution on the lookout for misbehaving girls. Solitary confinement was a practice adopted by the hospital long before Dorothy’s time, after one of the institution’s prominent governors wrote a pamphlet on the matter. Miss Wright reserved this most dire of punishments for Dorothy, whom she regarded as a bad seed. Numerous times the woman had the child locked up in cupboards, closets, and storerooms.
Justine Cowan was told none of these details verbally by her mother. When she was growing up, questions about Eileen’s past were strictly verboten. Justine was acutely aware that her mother had secrets. These appeared to be related to her being robbed of her standing as a descendant of the Welsh aristocracy. A demanding, hypercritical woman, Eileen was certainly preoccupied with social status. Also an accomplished pianist and painter, she was determined to produce a well-turned-out daughter. In childhood, the author had music and horseback-riding lessons. Private tutors for any number of subjects, including penmanship, regularly came to instruct Justine in the family home located in a desirable San Francisco neighbourhood. During her teenage years, Justine would go on to attend a prestigious boarding school. All bills were footed by her adored father, a prominent San Francisco attorney. Compliant with all of his wife’s wishes, he was the peacemaker, whose role in the family’s intense dysfunction would only become clear to Justine much later in life.
Given the childhood trauma she endured, Eileen had tremendous difficulty nurturing her daughter. Eileen was evidently mentally unstable—at times, even suicidal. During one episode, Justine’s father called her home from college in Berkeley to keep an eye on her mother, as he was due in court. Eileen couldn’t be left alone, he said. On that day the woman pressed a scrap of paper with the name “Dorothy Soames” into her nineteen-year-old daughter’s hand. Justine did not probe to find out the significance of the name. In fact, she soon put as many miles as possible between herself and her disturbed parent, moving from California to the southeastern US where she pursued a law degree and work in environmental protection. Communication and family visits were infrequent. As the years passed, Eileen attempted to broach the subject of her childhood, but her daughter, who had tallied a long list of resentments and allowed anger to harden into a protective carapace, refused to engage with her. A manuscript that Eileen eventually presented to Justine, documenting her experiences at the Foundling Hospital, was left unread for many years. In fact, it was only after a happy, later-in-life marriage and Eileen’s death from Alzheimer’s Disease that Justine begin to research her mother’s story.
Cowan’s book moves back and forth between her own growing-up years, her mother’s story, and the history of the Foundling Hospital. She’s clearly read and synthesized a great deal of information on the latter. It’s my impression that the history of institution rather drowned out the more personal story in the first half of the book. Abundant details about the Foundling Hospital and its governors became tedious to me and at times seemed irrelevant to Eileen/Dorothy’s story. I think a quarter of the book could safely have been cut. The pace improved considerably in the second half. (view spoiler)[At age twelve, Dorothy and another girl briefly escaped from the Foundling Hospital. Shortly after this, Dorothy’s birth mother reclaimed her, taking her to live in Shropshire. Sadly, details about this part of her story are almost completely lacking. The inference the author draws and supports is that this reunion did not go well. (hide spoiler)] Cowan does manage to sympathetically and imaginatively present what she learned about her mother and grandmother, Lena Weston, from the Foundling Hospital’s records. However, this is no substitute for a personal, emotionally resonant oral history from her mother. I found that the book, especially in earlier sections, often read like a research project, an academic exercise. Eileen—“Dorothy Soames”—did not fully live on the page.
This is a sad story in so many ways. First of all, there’s the tragedy of women alone bearing the deep shame, stigma, and burden of pregnancies that they were obviously not solely responsible for. Unwed mothers seeking to place their infants at the Foundling Hospital had to undergo a lengthy process to determine if they were of good enough character to merit the privilege of having their illegitimate offspring accepted. Part of the procedure involved being interviewed and judged by the wealthy male governors. Later, when many of these women found themselves in a better financial situation and sought to reclaim their children, they were almost always denied; the governors knew best.
Cowan’s book also reminds us of another kind of sadness. Often we don’t appreciate until later in life what some difficult people we have known may have endured, their hardship and emotional pain. While understandable, it seems deeply unfortunate, even tragic to me, that Cowan and her mother could not have somehow bridged their fraught relationship so that peace of some kind could have been achieved while Eileen was still alive. Cowan’s book is a brave and honest effort to come to terms with how the harms inflicted on one person ripple down to the next generation.
This is a gorgeous, very worthwhile picture book about the great French Impressionist painter Claude Monet. It highlights the important people who infThis is a gorgeous, very worthwhile picture book about the great French Impressionist painter Claude Monet. It highlights the important people who influenced him—the artist Eugene Boudin (who encouraged Monet to paint landscapes rather than people); Camille Pissarro (his great Paris art-school friend); and his beloved wife, Camille Devereau. It also discusses, in accessible language, some of Monet’s painting techniques. A wonderful introduction to the artist, this picture-book biography concludes with a spread of thumbnail images of several of Monet’s most famous works. (Each is accompanied by a brief commentary.) Brownridge’s book accomplishes a great deal in a few short pages. I loved it, and I think kids will, too.
My only criticism concerns the very small size of the font—at least, in my e-book copy....more
This is a straightforward, nicely illustrated picture book that tells the story of Clarence Brazier. Born into a large family in Magnetawan in centralThis is a straightforward, nicely illustrated picture book that tells the story of Clarence Brazier. Born into a large family in Magnetawan in central Ontario in 1906, in childhood Clarence did attend school—for one day. Because he was so big for his age, his teacher mistakenly assumed he was in the third grade. He was asked to stand and spell his name, but he couldn’t do it. He didn’t even know the alphabet yet! The sniggering of his fellow students deeply humiliated him, leaving an indelible mark. He fled the school, refusing to return.
Even though he was illiterate for the greater part of his life, Clarence was remarkably accomplished. He worked in mines, in the woods, and on his own farm. The only person who knew his secret was his wife. She handled all the literacy tasks in their 65-year marriage. After she died, Clarence set about teaching himself to read—using quite an ingenious method. However, it was in sharing his secret with another family member (his daughter, Doris) that his education really took off. Doris was a teacher, and her dad became her eldest student. In time Clarence was reading for two hours each day. He shared his inspirational story with many elementary school students during the last years of his life.
The book includes a couple of photographs of Clarence as well as a short but valuable authors’ note about the importance of reading and literacy.
Nicola Beauman, the author of this biography of the British writer Elizabeth Taylor believes her subject is one of the great women writers of the mid-Nicola Beauman, the author of this biography of the British writer Elizabeth Taylor believes her subject is one of the great women writers of the mid-twentieth-century. As Beauman sees it, the reason Taylor isn’t better known is due to her failure to mingle with members of the literary establishment, her introverted unwillingness to promote herself, and her opting for a comfortable and conventional middle-class existence as wife (to a rather staid sweets manufacturer) and devoted mother of two. Taylor’s canvas was small. She focussed on domestic matters, and her work was easily accessible to women. (She was cruelly and hurtfully attacked by group of female writers, most notably Olivia Manning, but praised by Elizabeth Bowen and Kingsley Amis.) Furthermore, Taylor may have harmed her own reputation with her insistence on having lived a very quiet life in which nothing much happened.
I tend to agree that nothing much of interest did happen in Taylor’s life. She may have posed nude for the painter Eric Gill, whose artist colony she lived near. She joined the Communist Party as a young woman and remained a member for many years. She had a lengthy extramarital affair with Ray Russell, a painter who never came to much, whom she loved deeply for most of her life. (She kept up a lengthy correspondence with him, and it is upon this that Beauman relies heavily for many of the details of Taylor’s life.) Taylor appears to have had a couple of abortions related to this liaison. Her husband was aware of the relationship (though perhaps not the pregnancy terminations) and for a time seemed accepting of it, as he himself was quite the philanderer, and besides Elizabeth kept a nice house, was a good cook, and dressed stylishly to boot.
Having read eleven of Taylor’s twelve novels, I felt I was in a reasonably good position to read a biography of Taylor. Maybe not. I’d read none of her short stories, which are a major focus of Beauman’s book. In fact, Beauman believes that Taylor’s first five novels (particularly A Game of Hide and Seek) and her short stories are her best work. I can’t comment on Beauman’s assessment of the short stories, every single one of which is discussed, but I don’t agree with the biographer about Taylor’s first five novels being her best, nor am I overly enthusiastic or convinced by Beauman’s critical commentary on them.
I personally do not know if Elizabeth Taylor is one of the great British women writers of the last century. I don’t feel I’ve read widely enough to offer an opinion on the matter. What I do believe from my reading of Taylor is that there is a lot more going on in her books than first meets the eye, and that second and third readings are fruitful. One does not need a large canvas to expose the inner workings of the human heart, the secrets people would prefer to remain hidden, and Elizabeth Taylor did this well in beautifully controlled prose.
Having now read a few of the very short picture biographies for young children in the Little People Big Dreams series, I’ve concluded that I like Having now read a few of the very short picture biographies for young children in the Little People Big Dreams series, I’ve concluded that I like the idea of the collection a lot more than the actual books. For one thing, based on what I’ve seen, the illustrations are mostly substandard—the cartoonish characters all have extremely large heads (maybe a girl requires an overly large brain box in which to concoct and accommodate her big dreams) as well as some bizarrely rendered physical features: Georgia O’Keeffe, the iconic artist, has mouse ears, and Harriet Tubman, the heroic Underground Railroad conductor, a koala-bear nose. As for the actual biographies of the famous females: They are little more than sketches. So many of the details and struggles in the lives of the selected subjects are not quite suitable for little ears. The stories end up being so watered down that the drama and significance of their lives are largely lost. In spite of all this, when I saw Simone de Beauvoir’s story on offer on the Net Galley website, I was genuinely curious. I don’t think I’d ever consider presenting the story of the French feminist, intellectual, political activist, and companion of Jean-Paul Sartre to the very young. How would it be managed?
Adequately enough, it turns out. Author Isabel Sanchez Vegara presents the basic details of de Beauvoir’s initially comfortable, bourgeois Parisian childhood quite well. The family had been very wealthy for a time, but fortunes apparently changed overnight. The servants were let go, and Simone’s mother was suddenly burdened with all the domestic duties while M. de Beauvoir sat around on his derrière—or so it is intimated. This apparently got the young Simone thinking, as did her father’s observation that she “had the brain of a man.” Why was a boy’s mind any different from a girl’s? she wondered. The author writes that Simone “had become a feminist before the word even existed,” which is simply not true. The word “feminism” actually entered the English language in 1851. It came to mean “advocating for women’s rights” sometime between 1890-1895, over a decade before de Beauvoir was born in 1908.
According to Vegara’s telling, de Beauvoir’s father was pivotal in his daughter’s intellectual development. He shared books with her, and encouraged her to read and write. He is also said to have wanted his daughters to be educated so that they could support themselves. (It’s a long time since I read de Beauvoir’s Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, but M. de Beauvoir’s being quite this progressive strains credibility. I’ve read elsewhere that if he’d actually had the money for dowries, these supposedly enlightened views would have been nowhere in evidence.) Simone’s parents scraped together the money to send her and her younger sister to a good convent school, where, at the age of 14, she would begin to wonder if there really was a God.
In dealing with de Beauvoir’s life from her teens onward, Vegara is understandably superficial. She mentions that Simone studied philosophy, which is about “finding new ways of thinking.” That’s not a wrong definition of philosophy, exactly, but it isn’t the way I’d explain the word to young children. De Beauvoir’s first meeting with Jean-Paul Sartre, her “soul” and “mind” mate is mentioned, and the course of their unconventional (open, non-monogamous) relationship quite cleverly sanitized as follows: “Simone and Jean-Paul never married or lived under the same roof, but they lived their love story in their own unique way.” De Beauvoir’s first novel is discussed in a similarly indirect and understated manner. We are told the book caused a scandal. (Yes, thinks the adult reader, because it was based on her and Sartre’s ménage a trois with one of de Beauvoir’s students, a younger Ukrainian woman—Olga Kosakiewicz, who later stated that her "trio" relationship with the two philosophers damaged her psychologically.)
The author winds down her narrative with allusions to de Beauvoir’s travels (she and Sartre—with his characteristically wonky, strabismic right eye—are pictured sitting primly in the company of Che Guevara) and to her inspirational feminist status. However, Vegara’s conclusion is oversimplified, poorly worded, and, well, just not quite right: “thanks to little Simone, we now know we aren’t born men and women—just special human beings with a life full of choices to make.” Current gender politics aside, most of us are born with male or female bodies, and living in those bodies does affect us and impact our choices. I think de Beauvoir would have agreed.
Writing a book about an influential French intellectual was certainly an ambitious project for Vegara. The text isn’t a total dud, but the extremely childish, scribbly illustrations, apparently done in pencil crayon, do not elevate the final product in any way. I am not exaggerating when I say I’ve seen better work by eight-year-olds. I read this out of curiosity. I am not impressed enough to recommend it....more
Before reading Dr. Jo, I was somewhat familiar with Monica Kulling’s work, having read three of her picture-book biographies in Tundra Books’ Great IdBefore reading Dr. Jo, I was somewhat familiar with Monica Kulling’s work, having read three of her picture-book biographies in Tundra Books’ Great Ideas Series. The books introduce kids to the historical figures behind many inventions we take for granted, including inexpensive personal cameras, paper bags, elevators, and the Zamboni machines used on skating rinks’ icy surfaces. One of the good things about the books is Kulling’s focus on African American, female, and economically disadvantaged individuals, whose curiosity, creativity, and grit drove them to make valuable contributions to everyday life. Kulling’s Dr. Jo, resembles her earlier books in both format and content. The narrative is roughly 30 pages long and attractively illustrated—this time by Julianna Swaney, whose clean pencil and water-colour work, with its antique quality, complements the life story of Dr. Sara Josephine Baker.
I’d never heard of Dr. Jo before this book, and I’m glad Kulling decided to write about her. Baker certainly deserves attention for her early understanding of “the connection between poverty and illness” and her tireless work “to improve the health of women and their children” in big cities. Born in 1873 in Poughkeepsie, New York on the Hudson River, Jo was a very unconventional girl. Considered a tomboy, she spent her summers fishing the river with her younger brother, Robbie. Winters, the two skated together.
Kulling isolates two key events in Jo’s young life. At age 10, she injured her knee and was tended to by a doctor and his son, who was also a doctor. This experience apparently sparked her interest in becoming a physician herself, a decidedly unladylike career choice at the time. It is what happened when Jo was sixteen, though, that was probably even more decisive. In 1889, sewage was emptied into the river, the source of drinking water for the town. Jo’s beloved brother and then her father contracted typhoid fever and died within a few months of each other. After high school, she traveled to New York City where she received medical training at a college started by two doctor sisters, Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell. (Elizabeth was, in fact, the first woman to receive medical qualifications in the United States.)
After obtaining her medical license, Dr. Jo struggled to make a living in private practice. Kulling doesn’t explain why, but one assumes that public confidence in “lady” doctors wasn’t high. She ended up becoming a public health inspector (and eventually the first director of the New York City Department of Child Hygiene). Her role as an inspector took her to Hell’s Kitchen, a West-Side neighbourhood with manure-piled streets and squalid tenements, which were mostly occupied by immigrants. In almost no time she realized that many deaths, especially children’s, were due to unsanitary conditions and ignorance. She was determined to make a difference.
Kulling spends the last several pages addressing the improvements Jo made to public health in the city. Among other things, Jo devised antibacterial beeswax containers that held exact (single) doses of the silver nitrate solution applied to prevent blindness in babies. Prior to this, bacteria-laden glass containers for the solution were actually contributing to the problem. Jo designed an infant sleeper, with a button-down front, to replace the swaddling that caused babies to die from heat stroke. She also set up a system for licensing midwives, and she organized accessible stations where mothers could obtain clean, fresh milk for their kids.
For the most part, I really liked Julianna Swaney’s illustrations, but they do fall a bit short at times. Although Swaney does give young readers historically accurate details—for example, a 6-inch medical thermometer (which resembles a knitting needle) appears in one picture, she does not satisfactorily communicate the grit, grime, and general filth of the environment in which Dr. Jo worked. The immigrant families all look a bit too tidy. One illustration is even a bit puzzling: a family, shown seated at a table, is strangely engaged in making paper or cloth flowers. The text offers no explanation about this. Perhaps it was some kind of piecemeal work available at the time?
Aside from a couple of reservations about the book’s artwork, I really liked Dr. Jo. Dr. Sara Josephine Baker was a fascinating and admirable woman, and Kulling’s book does her justice. The vocabulary and content make it best suited to kids aged 8 to 10....more
This is a picture book biography of Georgia O’Keeffe that hits on some of the key points of the iconic American artist’s life. The text and illustratiThis is a picture book biography of Georgia O’Keeffe that hits on some of the key points of the iconic American artist’s life. The text and illustrations suggest that Georgia stood apart from her six siblings in childhood, didn’t romp and play games with them, but was instead off on her own observing nature. Isabel Sanchez Vegara’s text also appropriately makes the point that one of O’Keeffe’s objectives as an artist was to make people attend to things—like tiny flowers—that they were otherwise too busy to notice.
Generally, this is a pretty substandard picture book. I loathed seeing O’Keeffe as little more than a cartoon stick figure with a big head and one mouse-like ear (usually the right) sticking out between curtains of loose black hair. Plenty of easels, paint brushes, and paint tubes are shown, but the illustrator, Erica Salcedo, plays it too safe and steers clear of trying to depict any of Georgia’s work. At one point, readers are told that people who attended a first showing of O’Keeffe’s art were puzzled by it, but there is no information (visual or textual) as to why.
In the end, I was rather stunned that such an iconic and eccentric figure should be presented to children in such a bland manner. There are so many missed opportunities. The most notable is the failure to emphasize the boldness of her announcement at age 12 that she intended to become an artist. That a girl should dream of making a living as a painter in an art world dominated by men was quite something, and it ought to have been highlighted. O’Keeffe’s individuality and fierce independence were not given the attention they deserved either.
I was not merely unimpressed by this book; I was actually annoyed by it. O’Keeffe herself didn’t have much use for biography. She seldom spoke about the events of her life and felt that her work was the important thing. The fact that young readers can’t even see any of that work in this book is very unfortunate.
CanadianReader
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