Review of Choosing Brave, by Angela Joy, illustrated by Janelle Washington

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Starred Review 0

Choosing Brave

How Mamie Till-Mobley and Emmett Till Sparked the Civil Rights Movement

by Angela Joy
illustrated by Janelle Washington

Roaring Brook Press, 2022. 64 pages.
Review written October 24, 2022, from a library book.
Starred Review

This powerful picture book biography tells the story of Mamie Till-Mobley, Emmett Till’s mother, and how she made hard choices so that the world would know about the terrible injustice that happened when her son was killed.

But that wasn’t the first hard choice she made. She faced bullying at school, though she graduated at the top of her class. Emmett’s father left her when Emmett was a baby, so she was a single mother. Polio left Emmett with a stutter, but she helped him and taught him to whistle to get through the stutter. That may have been why he ended up being accused of wolf whistling at a white woman. And murdered for it.

After Emmett’s death, Mamie paid a year’s wages to bring him north and used a glass-topped coffin to show the world what had been done to him.

Her brave choices helped start the Civil Rights movement, and even after Emmett’s murderers went free, she kept going to rallies, calling for justice.

Here’s how the book ends (before eight pages of notes at the back):

Yet still today, we whisper her name.

For lessons unlearned and hatred still living,
we whisper her name.
For strength to sow love in spite of our pain,
we utter her name.
For every son and every daughter who suffers still,
we cry her name.
For justice. For peace.
We shout her name.

A powerful and moving story, told in simple language and striking images.

AngelaJoyBooks.com
WashingtonCuts.com
mackids.com

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Review of Welcome to St. Hell, by Lewis Hancox

Biography, Graphic Memoir, Teen Nonfiction 0

Welcome to St. Hell

My Trans Teen Misadventure

by Lewis Hancox

Graphix (Scholastic), 2022. 298 pages.
Review written October 2, 2022, from a library book

Memoirs in graphic novel format are the perfect way to capture all the emotion and angst of the teenage years. In Welcome to St. Hell, Lewis Hancox tells about how difficult life was for him in high school when his name was Lois and everyone thought he was a girl.

Lewis grew up in a small town in England, officially named St Helens, but known to locals as St. Hell. It wasn’t a posh town, and the book is peppered with British slang I had to get used to, but it gives the feel of the place where he grew up.

I like the way older Lewis ushers the reader through the book, assuring everyone that it’s all going to turn out okay. But he tells how uncomfortable he was in his own skin when everyone – including himself – thought he was a girl.

And yes, when he started making out with his first girlfriend, his dysphoria made him extremely uncomfortable getting intimate — and there’s a diagram showing his naked body as it was then, with all the things he was uncomfortable about highlighted.

Yes, current book banners are citing that page. No, it’s not pornography. It’s a cartoon, and it’s not going to titillate anyone. It’s demonstrating his extreme gender dysphoria.

And he went through extremes to try to get a body that looked more like a man’s. Extreme dieting followed by obsessive working out. When he finally got to go to a gender identity clinic, it felt like life was opening up for him. And calm and happy adult Lewis, who has been leading us through the book, shows that he did find the solution to his troubles.

So if you’ve ever wondered what it’s like for transgender teens, who may not know yet that they’re transgender, only that they’re different, I highly recommend this book. And it needs to be available to teens, so the transgender ones who might come across it will know they are not freaks and they are not alone.

If you think that teens are too young to know which gender they are, I offer this book as a counter example. Lewis may not have then known what his feelings meant, but he knew that something was wrong with the way people perceived him. Please have some respect for what people know about their own bodies. Please!

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Sanctuary, by Christine McDonnell, illustrated by Victoria Tentler-Krylov

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Sanctuary

Kip Tiernan and Rosie’s Place, the Nation’s First Shelter for Women

by Christine McDonnell
illustrated by Victoria Tentler-Krylov

Candlewick Press, 2022. 36 pages.
Review written August 5, 2022, from a library book
Starred Review

Here’s a picture book biography of a woman I’d never heard of before — who truly deserves to be celebrated.

Kip Tiernan grew up during the Great Depression and watched her grandmother serve soup to the line of men who came to their door. Later, as an adult in 1968, she sold her business and gave the rest of her life to serving the poor.

First, she worked in shelters. Kip noticed that women would disguise themselves as men to get help in the shelter.

She later opened the nation’s first women’s shelter. Her work was beautiful because she respected people’s dignity.

She wanted to open a sanctuary with flowers and music where women wouldn’t be reminded they were poor, a shelter with no chores, no questions asked, just good meals and warm beds. She hoped the volunteers at her shelter would listen to the guests. When you listen to others, you show respect; you learn who they are and what they need.

This beautiful picture book celebrates a woman who gave her life to helping others.

The author teaches English to immigrant women today at the shelter that Kip Tiernan founded.

wanderwomenproject.com/places/kip-tiernan-memorial
candlewick.com

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Review of All Boys Aren’t Blue, by George M. Johnson

Audiobooks, Biography, Teen Nonfiction, True Stories 0

All Boys Aren’t Blue

A Memoir-Manifesto

by George M. Johnson
read by the author

Macmillan Audio, 2020. 5 hours, 12 minutes.
Review written November 9, 2020, from a library eaudiobook

In this book, George Johnson talks about what it was like for him growing up Black and queer, even in a loving and supportive family.

His storytelling style is interesting and engaging, though a little repetitive in spots. He had me on the edge of my seat when I listened to him tell about getting his teeth kicked out when he was five years old. His stories of his family, especially his grandma, are warm and loving.

When he talks about sexual coming-of-age, he gets way more detailed than what this middle-aged heterosexual white woman wanted to hear. But this book isn’t written for heterosexual middle-aged white women. It’s written especially to other Black and queer folks to find out they aren’t alone. He even talks about how little information he had about gay sex and how he hopes he can help others go beyond trial and error with a few less errors.

I’m glad this book is out there, and even for those not in its target audience, it’s a story of a boy growing up as an outsider and finding his way with the help of community.

iamgmjohnson.com
us.macmillan.com/audio

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Review of Marie’s Ocean, by Josie James

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Marie’s Ocean

Marie Tharp Maps the Mountains Under the Sea

by Josie James

Christy Ottaviano Books (Henry Holt). 48 pages.
Review written April 19, 2021, from a library book
Starred Review

Dramatized in graphic novel format with speech bubbles, this book tells of the life of Marie Tharp and how she overcame prejudice against women and became the first person to map the ocean floor.

First it shows her childhood interest in science and beginning jobs, which were never as challenging as she could handle. But then everything came together when Bruce Hazeen, a graduate student at Columbia asked her to plot sounding data of the ocean floor from many ships going across the Atlantic Ocean, using sonar.

It goes on to show how Marie discovered something in common in the plots from the ships’ data.

And then I noticed something curious. A V shaped cleft ran through each of the profiles I had drawn.

Could there be a crack in the center of the mountains of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge as deep and wide as the Grand Canyon?

It shows how this discovery supported the continental drift theory, which was considered scientific heresy at the time.

Then Bruce was asked to map the locations where transatlantic phone cables had broken due to earthquakes. When Marie plotted the earthquakes – they were all happening along the rift valley she had discovered in the middle of the ocean.

The scientific community was still skeptical of her work. Then Jacques Cousteau towed an underwater camera across the Mid-Atlantic Ocean floor and showed the world that Marie’s rift valley indeed existed.

Thereafter, scientists’ and the public’s opinion of the rift valley and Wegener’s theory of continental drift slowly began to shift. Opinion also began to change regarding women at sea. In 1965, after fifteen years working at my desk, Bruce offered me my first spot as a woman aboard a research vessel.

Marie Tharp continued working, mapping all the world’s oceans.

Heinrich, Bruce, and I continued to collaborate and produced an elaborate painting called the World Ocean Floor panorama in 1977. This glorious map depicts a one-world ocean whose hidden mountains and valleys, created by the immense forces of Earth, erupted off the canvas and dispersed the idea of a flat and featureless seafloor.

By dramatizing her story, this book brings you into the challenges Marie faced as a scientist and how completely she triumphed over them.

mackids.com

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Review of The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh, by Candace Fleming

Biography, Starred Review, Teen Nonfiction 0

The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh

by Candace Fleming

Schwartz & Wade Books, 2020. 372 pages.
Review written May 8, 2020, from a library book
Starred Review

The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh is a biography of Charles Lindbergh written for teen readers. As such, there’s a priority on being interesting and readable, but still a level of detail that gives you a complete look at his life.

She groups the book into two parts – the Rise and the Fall. He was only twenty-five years old when he made the transatlantic flight that propelled him into celebrity. He found a wife after that, and their first child was kidnapped, which made him again the focus of the whole nation. We learn all about his background, his upbringing, his ambitions, and his philosophy of life.

By the end of the book, I didn’t like the guy much, because of all I learned in the second half of the book. It tells about how he was duped by Hitler, but also how his own philosophy of life and belief in eugenics set him up to have sympathy with the goals of Nazism. He’d decided that fascism was a better form of government than democracy, because he thought white people with good genes should determine the direction of the country.

Candace Fleming does an excellent job of explaining his beliefs while pointing out problems with them. She shows the seeds of his ideas and how they developed over the course of his life.

She glosses over his life after World War II somewhat – but does mention that he had three other families in Europe, which he kept secret as long as he lived.

The Prologue is a striking way to start the book – at an enormous America First rally, where Lindbergh revved up the crowd. The author doesn’t give the name of the speaker running the rally when this paragraph comes up:

A couple of Firsters stepped assertively toward a reporter. Would the press cover the rally fairly this time? they wanted to know. Or would the newspapers be biased and inaccurate as usual? Many rally-goers believed the media couldn’t be trusted. Their hero, the face of America First and the man they’d come to hear speak tonight, had told them so. “Contemptible,” he’d called the press. “Dishonest parasites.” In a recent speech he’d even told supporters that the press was controlled by “dangerous elements,” men who placed their own interests above America’s. That was why he had to keep holding rallies, he explained. Someone had to tell it like it was. Someone had to speak the impolite truth about the foreigners who threatened the nation. It was time to build walls – “ramparts,” he called them – to hold back the infiltration of “alien blood.” It was time for America to close its borders, isolate itself from the rest of the world, and focus solely on its own interests. It was the only way, he claimed “to preserve our American way of life.”

Candace Fleming did her homework. There is a 6-page bibliography and 30 pages of source notes at the back.

candacefleming.com
GetUnderlined.com

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Review of Cubs in the Tub, by Candace Fleming

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Cubs in the Tub

The True Story of the Bronx Zoo’s First Woman Zookeeper

by Candace Fleming
illustrations by Julie Downing

Neal Porter Books, 2020. 48 pages.
Review written August 19, 2020, from a library book
Starred Review

Here’s a completely charming picture book biography, packed full of pictures of baby animals. I dare you to read it without smiling!

Besides the pictures of baby animals, we get the story of Helen Martini, whose husband was a zookeeper for the Bronx Zoo. Helen very much wanted a baby, but they were childless – and then her husband brought home a baby lion whose mother had rejected it. Helen took tender loving and motherly care of the baby, whom she named MacArthur.

After MacArthur was sent to a zoo in another part of the country, there were three tiger cubs that needed care. When they got so big their home couldn’t hold them, Helen had to bring them back to the zoo. But they didn’t like being apart from her, and she didn’t like being apart from them. So she made a nursery at the zoo out of an old storeroom and spent the night with her tiger babies.

When the tigers outgrew even the zoo nursery, it wasn’t long before other animal babies needed care. And Helen got offered a job at a time when all zookeepers had been men.

This inspiring story is told in an entertaining way, with plenty of pictures of baby animals to warm your heart.

HolidayHouse.com

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Source: This review is based on a book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Alias Anna, by Susan Hood with Greg Dawson

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Alias Anna

A True Story of Outwitting the Nazis

by Susan Hood
with Greg Dawson

Harper, 2022. 339 pages.
Review written August 19, 2022, from a library book
Starred Review

The only sad thing about this book telling a true story is that I’m afraid kids looking for a gripping historical novel in verse may not find it in the nonfiction section, but it would give them that reading experience.

This is the true story of Greg Dawson’s mother Zhanna and how she survived the Holocaust. He’s written the story for adults in his book Hiding in the Spotlight: A Musical Prodigy’s Story of Survival, 1941-1946. Susan Hood took the story and put it into poetry and language for children the same age as Zhanna was when World War II began to impact her life.

Zhanna and her younger sister Frina were child prodigy piano performers in Ukraine, already having performed on the radio and concert halls throughout their country before World War II hit.

First Stalin came, causing their family trouble, and then the Germans, causing even more trouble. Zhanna was 13 years old when her family was part of a death march — marched into the countryside, where thousands of Jews were gunned down. But on the march, her father bribed a guard, and Zhanna escaped.

However, her old town wasn’t safe, because she was famous for her performing, and her neighbors knew she was Jewish. She changed her name to Anna and got a new passport with the help of kind strangers. This book tells the saga as Anna and her sister ended up in a troupe performing for the Germans during the war, winding up in Berlin and traveling through the German countryside. They were used to build up the spirits of the German people, but this way of “hiding in the spotlight” saved their lives.

This is a story I might not have believed if it were fiction, as there were definitely coincidences along the way that saved her life.

Because of being poetry, this book reads quickly — but that’s also partly because it’s hard to stop turning pages as Zhanna is surrounded by danger all along the way.

This is one where you’re happy to be told at the beginning that this story is someone’s memories — you’re so glad to know right up front that she survived.

I hope kids who enjoy historical fiction will find this book, because it fits right in with other World War II novels, with maybe a few more coincidences and narrow escapes!

susanhoodbooks.com

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Review of Shaped by Her Hands, by Anna Harber Freeman and Barbara Gonzales

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Shaped by Her Hands

Potter Maria Martinez

by Anna Harber Freeman and Barbara Gonzales
illustrated by Aphelandra

Albert Whitman and Company, 2021. 32 pages.
Review written April 14, 2021, from a library book
Starred Review

Shaped by Her Hands is a picture book biography of Maria Povika Martinez, a woman who carried on the tradition of Native American pottery and became famous for perfecting new techniques.

It begins her story as a girl in a pueblo among the Tewa people of San Ildefonso. She learned to make pottery from her aunt.

Aunt Nicolasa was happy to show Maria the centuries-old tradition of san-away. Together, they gathered clay and thanked Mother Earth for sharing with them.

Nicolasa showed Maria how to mix the clay with water and volcanic ash, and how to roll coils between her hands to build the pot’s walls.

As the two of them worked, Nicolasa told Maria about the importance of sharing clay knowledge. She wanted Maria to know how to make pots to store seeds and grains in, so their Tewa traditions would live on.

The book shows Maria growing up and marrying and coming back to the clay. She developed a new technique from an ancient sherd of black pottery an archaeologist showed her. She and her husband, who added decorations, created beautiful black-on-black pottery that was extremely popular.

And throughout her life, she always found it important to share what she knew.

When Julian died in 1943, Maria’s heart and pots felt empty without her husband and partner. But she had spent her whole life sharing clay with her family.

First, her children came to paint the designs.

Later, her grandchildren came to help with the painting and polishing.

They made pots as a family, remembering to thank Mother Earth, and teaching new hands to form, polish, and design.

A lovely and simple book about someone who made beautiful art and passed on the knowledge.

albertwhitman.com

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Review of Grand Theft Horse, by G. Neri, illustrated by Corban Wilkin

Biography, Starred Review, Teen Nonfiction 0

Grand Theft Horse

by G. Neri
illustrated by Corban Wilkin

Tu Books (Lee & Low), 2018. 230 pages.
Review written July 30, 2022, from my own copy sent by the publisher
Starred Review

In this nonfiction graphic novel (or should I just say graphic nonfiction?), the author tells the amazing true story of his cousin, Gail Ruffu, who was the first person charged with Grand Theft Horse in California in 150 years.

She was acquitted of those charges, because the horse was her own — or at least she owned 20% of it — but the story is amazing, and that wasn’t the end of her troubles.

The story also sheds light on the problem of drug use and cruelty in the horse racing industry, where thoroughbreds are worked to death and their health and safety isn’t taken into account.

Gail Ruffu wanted to change that. She bought a horse, Urgent Envoy, who she thought was a winner, but could only afford to be a part owner. She thought she had the others on board for a no-drugs, patient approach.

But then they started pressuring her to race the horse before he was ready and even when he was injured. After they took her off the team, Gail learned that Urgent Envoy had a hairline fracture, but they were planning to race him anyway. If he raced, his leg would most likely break completely, and he’d be killed. So she took matters into her own hands and stole her own horse on Christmas Eve, 2004.

But she ended up suffering for that decision. Her main partner in ownership was a lawyer who eventually got her banned from the track. This is the story of her work to vindicate herself and to save the life and health of the horse she loved.

Since it’s a graphic novel, the story doesn’t take long to read — which is a good thing, because it’s compelling and not easy to stop reading.

A story of someone without power standing up to the powerful to help those who can’t speak for themselves.

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