A profile of groundbreaking 19th-century French animalier Rosa Bonheur.
Sanderson, herself a realistic painter whose initial artistic inspiration was horses, crafts an engaging biography whose dramatic oil compositions and engrossing narrative will pull in other equine aficionados. Peppering the text with horse imagery (Rosa “galloped into the world” and was sent “trotting back home” for being naughty at boarding school), Sanderson describes how Bonheur (1822-1899) was introduced to art as a child by her artist father who took her under his tutelage. At school, she “covered her papers with animal sketches,” and as a teenager, she trained at the Louvre; Bonheur went on to study horse anatomy at a medical school and horse musculature at a slaughterhouse. Sanderson explains the period’s limitations on women’s ambitions and its expectations regarding marriage—something headstrong Bonheur had “no interest in.” Thus, it is impressive that her paintings were shown at the Paris Salon annual exhibition, where she won a gold medal. It was her masterpiece, The Horse Fair, however—at 8 feet tall by 16 ½ feet wide—that garnered international attention and the most critical praise. Sanderson details the various steps in executing a work of this scale; the illustrations depict the painting studies, red ochre outlines and layering, and Bonheur on a ladder adding personality to each horse. Sanderson states that Bonheur was aided by her “companion” Nathalie. The extensive backmatter includes information about Bonheur’s lesbian identity.
An inspiring glimpse into the talent and drive of a woman who marched to the beat of a different drummer. (author’s note, bibliography, resources, sources, image credits) (Picture-book biography. 6-9)Pub Date: March 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-62371-848-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Crocodile/Interlink
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
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The bubble-helmeted feline explains what rockets do and the role they have played in sending people (and animals) into space.
Addressing a somewhat younger audience than in previous outings (Professor Astro Cat’s Frontiers of Space, 2013, etc.), Astro Cat dispenses with all but a light shower of “factoroids” to describe how rockets work. A highly selective “History of Space Travel” follows—beginning with a crew of fruit flies sent aloft in 1947, later the dog Laika (her dismal fate left unmentioned), and the human Yuri Gagarin. Then it’s on to Apollo 11 in 1969; the space shuttles Discovery, Columbia, and Challenger (the fates of the latter two likewise elided); the promise of NASA’s next-gen Orion and the Space Launch System; and finally vague closing references to other rockets in the works for local tourism and, eventually, interstellar travel. In the illustrations the spacesuited professor, joined by a mouse and cat in similar dress, do little except float in space and point at things. Still, the art has a stylish retro look, and portraits of Sally Ride and Guion Bluford diversify an otherwise all-white, all-male astronaut corps posing heroically or riding blocky, geometric spacecraft across starry reaches.
Energetic enough to carry younger rocketeers off the launch pad if not into a very high orbit. (glossary) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-911171-55-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Flying Eye Books
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The iconic animator introduces young readers to each “happy place” in his life.
The tally begins with his childhood home in Marceline, Missouri, and climaxes with Disneyland (carefully designed to be “the happiest place on Earth”), but the account really centers on finding his true happy place, not on a map but in drawing. In sketching out his early flubs and later rocket to the top, the fictive narrator gives Ub Iwerks and other Disney studio workers a nod (leaving his labor disputes with them unmentioned) and squeezes in quick references to his animated films, from Steamboat Willie to Winnie the Pooh (sans Fantasia and Song of the South). Eliopoulos incorporates stills from the films into his cartoon illustrations and, characteristically for this series, depicts Disney as a caricature, trademark mustache in place on outsized head even in childhood years and child sized even as an adult. Human figures default to white, with occasional people of color in crowd scenes and (ahistorically) in the animation studio. One unidentified animator builds up the role-modeling with an observation that Walt and Mickey were really the same (“Both fearless; both resourceful”). An assertion toward the end—“So when do you stop being a child? When you stop dreaming”—muddles the overall follow-your-bliss message. A timeline to the EPCOT Center’s 1982 opening offers photos of the man with select associates, rodent and otherwise. An additional series entry, I Am Marie Curie, publishes simultaneously, featuring a gowned, toddler-sized version of the groundbreaking physicist accepting her two Nobel prizes.
Blandly laudatory. (bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2875-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
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