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Josephine
By Patricia Hruby Powell
Illustrated by Christian Robinson

School Library Journal
March 2014

“Captivating… a fun, enriching, and holistic reading experience.”—School Library Journal, starred review

This charming biography invites readers to step inside the vibrant and spirited world of performer and civil rights advocate, Josephine Baker. Robinson’s paintings are as colorful and rich as Josephine Baker’s story, offering page after page of captivating and animated illustrations and rhythmic text, which is written in blank verse. In a few short and well-organized parts, readers learn the story of one of the world’s most well known female performers who danced and sang her way from the poor and segregated streets of St. Louis to the dazzling stages of Paris all the way to Carnegie Hall. Text and illustrations work in tandem to accurately document Josephine’s extraordinary life and the era in which she lived. Clear and lively descriptions of Josephine’s story play out creatively in the text, introducing readers to basic principles of poetic structure in storytelling and offering an accurate portrait of a woman who fought for racial equality and civil rights through her life’s passion: performance. Reluctant readers of nonfiction and poetry lovers alike will be drawn to this book’s musical, theatrical nature, making for a fun, enriching, and holistic reading experience. This unique and creative work is a first purchase.

Patricia Hruby Powell (Blossom Tales) begins this biography of the larger-than-life Josephine Baker (1906-1975) with her 1927 quote, “I shall dance all my life…. I would like to die, breathless, spent, at the end of a dance.” Rhythmic language provides the beat to this life well lived, and chronicles how Baker fulfilled her wish, dying after a triumphant opening at the Bobino theater in Paris, at age 69.

Shelf Awareness for Readers
January 17, 2014

“Powell and Robinson create a biography of a woman whose life and art are inseparable.”—Shelf Awareness for Readers, starred review

The pleasingly flat-planed folk-art style of Christian Robinson (Harlem’s Little Blackbird) works to dramatic effect. Drab background colors as Josephine’s mother scrubs floors to support the family give way to a bright white backdrop of vaudeville dancers on the next page, the manifestation of the woman’s own dreams of dancing. He follows Tumpy, the childhood incarnation of Josephine, as she transforms into a dancer whose “knees squeeze, now fly/ heels flap and chop/ arms scissor and splay/ eyes swivel and pop.” A teenage Josephine, suspended above the stage as Cupid, seems to swing off the page, her arms and legs pumping as if with a child’s joy on a playground swing. Powell suggests that Baker’s witness of the East Saint Louis riots seeded “the core of a volcano” that she’d later channel into her dances. Although Baker never felt fully at home in the U.S., she found one in France, and worked in the French Resistance.

Powell and Robinson create a biography of a woman whose life and art are inseparable. Josephine Baker did exactly what she set out to do: she danced all her life

“March” (Top Shelf 2013) by John Lewis is an important book by an important person about an important event. But more importantly, it’s a great read.

Lewis collaborates with congressional aide and writer Andrew Aydin and illustrator Nate Powell in Book One of the graphic novel trilogy, following Lewis’ life in the civil rights movement. It begins with Lewis leading 600 peaceful demonstrators across of Edmund Pettus Bridge, marching from Selma to Montgomery in March 1965—demonstrating in order to vote. Alabama state troopers crack down and one of the ugliest days of U.S. history takes place—“Bloody Sunday.”

We then cut to 2009—inauguration day for President Barack Obama. Lewis is now a long time U.S. congressman representing Georgia’s District 5. Two African American kids are coming to visit him in his office. Lewis tells his story of growing up the son of a tenant farmer, his raising chickens in Alabama, the “Jim Crow” deep south.

In college Lewis meets Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders and he’s inspired to work alongside them. The “colored” populations of southern cities like Montgomery and Memphis boycotted the downtown stores for leverage to have their rights instated. How was this organized? In churches, preachers from the pulpit called out, Everyone who did not spend money downtown this week please stand.

It’s always a matter of economy. The white businesses needed the patronage of black customers. This is how African Americans wielded power. John remembers that the older “colored” generation would make concessions to the white people. This felt like a betrayal to the younger idealistic generation. In the end it was the youth—college, high school, even junior high students—who held out and won the real battles for black rights.

In order to test the new desegregation laws, John and other students sat at Nashville Woolworth lunch counters. Instead of being served, they would be arrested. As chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) at age 23, he was the youngest of the “Big Six” leaders of the civil rights movement. He was a planner and keynote speaker at the famous March on Washington, August 1963.

The creators of “March” liken their comic to the 1957 publication entitled “Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story,” the one that first educated John Lewis and his teenage generation. You can Google that and download it as a PDF.

The “March” artwork delivers details, vistas, and emotions of the times, with brush and pen with such sophistication you forget it’s in black and white. After reading Book One we can all look forward to Books Two and Three.

Patricia Hruby Powell is a nationally touring speaker, dancer, storyteller, occasional librarian, and children’s book author. Her biography Josephine: The Dazzling LIfe of Josephine Baker will be released January 14.

 

Ryan Dean—or Winger—is a fourteen year old junior who plays wing on the rugby team in Andrew Smith’s “Winger” (Simon & Schuster 2013). That’s right. He’s precocious. Thank heavens his horniness is charmingly creative. That’s because he’s so vulnerable and at the mercy of his teenage hormones. And the author is very funny.

For instance, “What a cruel deal it is to have been born with testicles, and to have to carry them around along with me on my miserable path through life. They may just as well have been the size of Volkswagens for the burden they had become.”

Annie is Ryan Dean’s best friend—a sixteen year old junior—at their prep school in Oregon. He’s in love with her, but she calls him “Little Boy.” Ryan Dean has been sentenced to live in the dismal Opportunity Hall due to a cell phone hacking infraction and therefore cannot go to the Halloween Dance. When rugby teammate and close friend JP announces he’s taking Annie to the dance, Winger starts a fight with him during a practice skirmish.

Few fights or skirmishes are so riveting. What Ryan Dean does to JP, step-by-step, I could visualize and almost admire for its cleverness. Coach M, who’s a Brit, and cares for these boys, is not only a ref for the team but acts as such to the reader. As long as Coach condones the rough play, it’s not TOO rough—not too aggressive. At least for awhile.

Ryan Dean is never a wimp. He makes up for his lack of size and strength in speed, wiriness, craftiness. He’s the trickster.

Camaraderie among teammates—one of whom is openly gay (Joey) and seems to be accepted regardless–is sweet and funny. They do taunt Joey, but with good nature. Even after being beaten up on the field and sometimes off, there’s camaraderie among teammates afterwards. There’s a boy-code of honor in athletics. Until there isn’t.

The violence augments to a point that is trying. His horniness does too, and I’m just thankful the author is so funny.

When a nurse is cleaning his wounds with a warm towel Ryan Dean says, “If I was a cat, I would have purred. If I was an alligator, I would have been hypnotized. But since I was only me, all I could do was lie there and contemplate everything perverted I had ever dreamed about since I was, like, seven years old.”

My one gripe is the role of the girls. They’re smart and athletic, but they’re just girlfriends in this story. Okay, so it’s a boy book (that girls will like, too). If you don’t already know this stuff, you learn a lot about boys on sports teams. “Winger” is well written—the tragic ending seems real. And along the way you’ll laugh. Until you don’t.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s book, JOSEPHINE: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker will be released January 14, 2014. Find out more at  www.talesforallages.com

 

The Bayou Tourterelle is sanctuary for a pair of adolescent raccoons, various endangered birds including the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, rattle snakes, a boy named Chap, his mother, and the Sugar Man–all in Kathi Appelt’s “The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp” (Atheneum 2013).

Well, the Ivory Billed Woodpecker hasn’t been seen in years, but Chap’s recently- deceased granddaddy Audie saw it some years back and says he took a Polaroid shot of it. But even that has been lost. He also took a Polaroid shot of the huge furry Sugar Man (cousin to Bigfoot), but Sugar Man hasn’t been seen in a generation or two. Who is to believe that either exists?

Chap and his mama fry sugar pies at the Paradise Café, but that’s subject to change when villain Sonny Boy Beaucoup and his alligator-wrestling sidekick Jaeger Stitch enter. They want to raze the bayou and build a Gator World Wrestling Arena and Theme Park. Oh, that just can’t happen.

The raccoons J’Miah and Bingo live in a rusted out ’48 DeSoto hidden in the swamp. Their parents gone, they fend for themselves climbing trees and foraging for crayfish until they discover those fried sugar pies cooling at the Paradise Café—pies made from the muscovado swamp sugar cane. Dee-licious.

The swamp-side stand of sugarcane is guarded by a mass of slithering rattlesnakes, but Chap knows that to harvest it he has to lull those rattlers to sleep with a particular lullaby.

Not only are Sonny Boy and Stitch ready to break ground for the theme park in the swamp (unless Chap and his mama can come up with a “boatload of cash”), but a herd of feral hogs is headed to the bayou and surely they’ll destroy all the swampy flora—not to mention the fauna—to get that sugar cane.

As true blue swamp scouts, J’Miah and Bingo must find and wake the Sugar Man, who has been sleeping for 60 years. Only he can save the swamp.

Kathi Appelt writes with droll wit and sly humor. Her warm and gentle Texas drawl especially shines through when she ‘breaks down the fourth wall’ with such pleas as “Say it sisters and brothers—lives were at stake” or “Is there anything worse than…[the horrible thing going on in the story]? We think not.”

Her cast of characters drives a great eco-yarn. You’re pretty sure who is going to win out, but the journey is a whole whopping lot of fun. Boy, would I love to read this aloud to a class of third graders.

Patricia Hruby Powell will be begin reviewing young adult books December 15.