Multiple design flaws make this a hard pass.
Focusing on mostly U.S. athletes, Cline-Ransome offers snapshots of some revolutionary athletes who brought change to the gender makeup of sports.
Organized by date of birth, starting with Constance Applebee, a British immigrant who, in the early 1900s, brought field hockey to U.S. college campuses as a women’s sport, and ending with present-day baseball star Mo’ne Davis, this showcases a small selection of women athletes in successive double-page spreads. The design is flashy, but it also gets in the way of the book’s effectiveness. Each bio includes a full-page photo with an inspirational quote printed over it in cursive type; these are unreferenced, often decontextualized, and sometimes confusing. Within the bios, the writing is engaging, with ample use of direct quotes by and about athletes, capturing their personalities and achievements. There is no introduction, however, and with no statement of scope or mission, it leaves readers to wonder why these specific athletes and facts were chosen. The hard-to-read white text on brightly colored backgrounds is at times anecdotal, and with no source notes or any kind of bibliographic references, readers cannot follow up or verify details. Each bio ends midcareer, but a backmatter section titled “After the Whistle” gives a wrap-up of each athlete’s life. Unfortunately, the absence of pagination will make it hard for young readers to cross-reference these with the main bios, and it is only here where the athletes’ more controversial sides come to light.
Multiple design flaws make this a hard pass. (Collective biography. 10-14)Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6453-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
A breezy, bustling bucketful of courageous acts and eye-popping feats.
Why should grown-ups get all the historical, scientific, athletic, cinematic, and artistic glory?
Choosing exemplars from both past and present, Mitchell includes but goes well beyond Alexander the Great, Anne Frank, and like usual suspects to introduce a host of lesser-known luminaries. These include Shapur II, who was formally crowned king of Persia before he was born, Indian dancer/professional architect Sheila Sri Prakash, transgender spokesperson Jazz Jennings, inventor Param Jaggi, and an international host of other teen or preteen activists and prodigies. The individual portraits range from one paragraph to several pages in length, and they are interspersed with group tributes to, for instance, the Nazi-resisting “Swingkinder,” the striking New York City newsboys, and the marchers of the Birmingham Children’s Crusade. Mitchell even offers would-be villains a role model in Elagabalus, “boy emperor of Rome,” though she notes that he, at least, came to an awful end: “Then, then! They dumped his remains in the Tiber River, to be nommed by fish for all eternity.” The entries are arranged in no evident order, and though the backmatter includes multiple booklists, a personality quiz, a glossary, and even a quick Braille primer (with Braille jokes to decode), there is no index. Still, for readers whose fires need lighting, there’s motivational kindling on nearly every page.
A breezy, bustling bucketful of courageous acts and eye-popping feats. (finished illustrations not seen) (Collective biography. 10-13)Pub Date: May 10, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-14-751813-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Puffin
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
Hot on the heels of the well-received Leonardo da Vinci (2005) comes another agreeably chatty entry in the Giants of Science series. Here the pioneering physicist is revealed as undeniably brilliant, but also cantankerous, mean-spirited, paranoid and possibly depressive. Newton’s youth and annus mirabilis receive respectful treatment, the solitude enforced by family estrangement and then the plague seen as critical to the development of his thoughtful, methodical approach. His subsequent squabbles with the rest of the scientific community—he refrained from publishing one treatise until his rival was dead—further support the image of Newton as a scientific lone wolf. Krull’s colloquial treatment sketches Newton’s advances in clearly understandable terms without bogging the text down with detailed explanations. A final chapter on “His Impact” places him squarely in the pantheon of great thinkers, arguing that both his insistence on the scientific method and his theories of physics have informed all subsequent scientific thought. A bibliography, web site and index round out the volume; the lack of detail on the use of sources is regrettable in an otherwise solid offering for middle-grade students. (Biography. 10-14)
Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-670-05921-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2006
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