Teddy Roosevelt roars, fumes, and looks back on his life and family in this graphic version of Luckinbill’s one-man stage show Teddy Tonight.
Though the background dissolves at need into various historical scenes, it’s the performance that Tait portrays here, depicting in his black, white, and slate-blue panels a Roosevelt who looks like Luckinbill in makeup and returning frequently to facial close-ups and a simple stage setting with a podium, a few items of furniture, and a teddy bear. Threaded with direct quotes, the monologue mixes biographical reminiscences both tragic and fond with furious (and cogent!) fulminations about the inability of Woodrow Wilson and other World War I–era “flubdubs” to accept the futility of trying to reason with those who only respect force. It is left largely intact—with edits that serve to lend TR’s environmental vision and his liberal views on civil and human rights a (largely if not entirely deserved) glossy sheen. The legendary force of his personality is more clearly evoked in the live show, which is available online for free, but readers will still hear echoes of it here. Along with a coherent overview of TR’s accomplishments, they will come away with a clear picture of his character as one for whom father, family, and a profound desire to live a “worthwhile” life were the chief values.
It’s not physically nuanced, but it’s a vivid picture of Teddy at his most admirable…and prescient. (Graphic biography. 11-14)Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-68247-487-7
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Dead Reckoning/Naval Institute Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
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Well-documented proof that, when it came to early automobiles, it wasn’t just men who took the wheel.
Despite relentlessly flashy page design that is more distracting than otherwise and a faint typeface sure to induce eyestrain, this companion to Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom (2011) chronicles decided shifts in gender attitudes and expectations as it puts women (American women, mostly) behind the wheel in the first decades of the 20th century. Sidebar profiles and features, photos, advertisements, and clippings from contemporary magazines and newspapers festoon a revved-up narrative that is often set in angular blocks for added drama. Along with paying particular attention to women who went on the road to campaign for the vote and drove ambulances and other motor vehicles during World War I, Macy recounts notable speed and endurance races, and she introduces skilled drivers/mechanics such as Alice Ramsey and Joan Newton Cuneo. She also diversifies the predominantly white cast with nods to Madam C.J. Walker, her daughter, A’Lelia (both avid motorists), and the wartime Colored Women’s Motor Corps. An intro by Danica Patrick, checklists of “motoring milestones,” and an extended account of an 1895 race run and won by men do more for the page count than the overall story—but it’s nonetheless a story worth the telling.
Macy wheels out another significant and seldom explored chapter in women’s history. (index, statistics, source notes, annotated reading list) (Nonfiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4263-2697-4
Page Count: 96
Publisher: National Geographic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
Categories: CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CHILDREN'S HISTORY
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Single-page profiles of men who were guided by their better angels.
“History books are full of men who have made their mark,” Peters writes. “But these great men were not always good men.” So this atypical gallery focuses on men who served communities, demonstrated real respect for others, or otherwise acted on worthy principles. With one exception, men presented were born in or at least lived into the 20th century. That exception, John Stuart Mill, leads off for his then-radical notions about human (including women’s) rights and the “tyranny of the majority.” The ensuing multiracial, multinational roster mixes the predictable likes of Cesar Chavez, Thích Nhất Hạnh, and Roberto Clemente with Chinese diplomat Feng-Shan Ho (who helped “hundreds, and possibly thousands” of Jews escape Nazi-occupied Vienna), Indian child-labor activist Kailash Satyarthi, Malala Yousafzai’s dad and champion, Ziauddin, transgender activist Kylar W. Broadus, and socially conscious creative artists including Lin-Manuel Miranda and Kendrick Lamar. Though intent on highlighting good works, the author doesn’t shy away from personal details—she identifies six entrants as gay and one, Freddie Mercury, as bisexual—or darker ones, such as Harvey Milk’s assassination and Anthony Bourdain’s suicide. Washington works with a severely limited menu of facial expressions, but each subject in his full-page accompanying portraits radiates confidence and dignity.
Pure gold for readers in search of role models who buck conventional masculine expectations. (source notes) (Collective biography. 11-14)Pub Date: June 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-52941-9
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
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