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Deborah Hopkinson

NonfictionHistoryEuropean History

His Majesty’s Airship

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

In His Majesty’s Airship: The Life and Tragic Death of the World’s Largest Flying Machine, award-winning author and historian S.C. Gwynne (Rebel Yell) delves into the little-known story behind the 1930 crash of a hydrogen-filled British airship called R101.

R101 was the brainchild of Lord Christopher Birdwood Thomson, who held the rather inflated title of Secretary of State for Air. A baron and peer of the House of Lords, Thomson had been put in charge of the development of British dirigibles. On October 4, 1930, he prepared to make a 5,000-mile journey from England to Karachi, India, in R101, which Gwynne describes as “a giant silver fish floating weightless in the slate-gray seas of the sky.”

At the time, R101 was one of the largest human-made objects on Earth, larger by volume than the Titanic. It’s an apt comparison, because like the ocean liner, the R101 was touted as the pinnacle of technological achievement, luxury and safety. Its press office boasted that the 777-foot-long hydrogen-filled R101 was “the safest aircraft of any kind ever built.” 

Using hydrogen airships to fly long distances and connect England with its far-flung colonies was in part a reaction to the state of airplane travel at the time. Just three years previously, in 1927, a flight from England to India took 12 days and required 20 stops. An ocean liner could make the trip in two weeks. Thomson’s goals for the R101? Four days. 

Gwynne intersperses the story of R101’s short, tragic flight with the history of zeppelin airships more generally, including the use of airships as aerial bombers during World War I and the impact of the August 1921 crash of a British airship called R38. Gwynne’s well-documented account also includes photos of airships, as well as of Thomson. The most fascinating part, of course, is following Lord Thomson as he prepared for this doomed voyage, for which he brought champagne, lots of ministry paperwork and even fancy carpets! R101 took off into a developing severe weather system, flying over London against a stiff wind while people rushed out onto the streets to see this incredible sight. 

R101 has more eerie similarities with the Titanic: It burst into flames shortly after 2 a.m., and newspapers around the world carried news of the disaster. There were only six survivors (all crew members) out of 54 people on board, but the crash of R101 did not entirely end the era of experimentation with hydrogen airships. That would come later, in the aftermath of a crash far better known today: the Hindenburg.

Gwynne is a consummate storyteller, and his account of R101 is riveting and not to be missed.

S.C. Gwynne is a consummate storyteller, and his account of the 1930 crash of a spectacularly large hydrogen-filled British airship is not to be missed.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Big

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Vashti Harrison, creator of Little Leaders, the bestselling illustrated nonfiction series, makes her fiction debut with Big, a simple yet immensely significant picture book. Harrison marshals her considerable talents for a story that celebrates a young Black girl’s aspirations and highlights how words have the ability to empower or to cause suffering.

The book opens as an adorable baby reaches up to touch a mobile of multicolored stars that hangs over her crib. “Once there was a girl / with a big laugh and a big heart / and very big dreams,” reads the spare text on the opposite page. As the baby becomes a toddler and then a girl, Harrison considers the shifting connotations of the word big in her life. At first, when she’s very young, the girl receives praise from adults who call her “a big girl,” and the word rewards her growth and accomplishments. But the word soon takes on hurtful dimensions that culminate in a playground scene inspired by Harrison’s own childhood. When the girl is unable to get out of a swing, her classmates rain down taunts and an adult scolds, “Don’t you think you’re too big for that? You’re in big trouble!” 

Harrison uses powerful visuals to explore the effect of others’ opinions on the girl. Though the girl is illustrated in vibrant shades of brown and pink, everyone else in the book is drawn in shadowy monochromes. Their words hurtle forcefully across the page, and Harrison conveys their negative impact as the girl gradually grows disproportionately large in relation to the people around her. In one scene, she stands twice as tall as her dance instructor, who uses a paint roller to cover the girl’s pink tutu with a shade called “husky blue.” Eventually, the girl becomes so large that she pushes against the very edges of the pages themselves before curling up in a ball, turning her back to the reader and beginning to cry. In the pool of tears that forms around her, the girl discovers words of affirmation (“creative,” “graceful,” “kind”), as well as the words that caused her so much pain. What follows is a beautiful journey of healing, transformation and self-love.

In Big, Harrison invites readers to reflect on how we treat others based on their body size and to consider the implicit biases we hold about which kinds of bodies are “acceptable.” Her sophisticated use of color, design and space make for an outstanding reading experience. In a moving and personal author’s note, Harrison writes of her hopes that the book will especially resonate with “those of us who are Black girls in big bodies.” 

Straightforward enough for even very young children to understand and appreciate, but with a vital message for adults too, Big is one of the year’s most exceptional picture books.

In one of the year’s most exceptional picture books, bestselling author-illustrator Vashti Harrison considers the shifting connotations of the word big in a young girl’s life.
NonfictionHumorHistoryBiography

Edison’s Ghosts

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Geniuses seem to inhabit a world apart from mere mortals like us. But they don’t, as the irreverent and entertaining Edison’s Ghosts makes clear. Debut author and science writer Katie Spalding has mined history, biography and psychology to turn the cult of genius on its head, shining a sassy light on the idiosyncrasies of some of history’s greatest minds. People traditionally held up as geniuses, she demonstrates, still fit under the heading of “everyone is an idiot.” Although, “Maybe it’s just the apparent contrast between what we expect from these figures and what we get.”

Take Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, for example, whom Spalding compares to a modern child star with an extremely pushy stage dad. After a childhood under his father’s thumb, Mozart turned out to be “kind of a handful.” Spalding unearths unusual bits of trivia about the musical prodigy, including the fact that Mozart apparently never outgrew a juvenile sense of bathroom humor, and that he believed babies should be fed on water. (Only two of his six children survived to adulthood.)

As for the title essay, “Thomas Edison’s Lesser-Known Invention: Dial-a-Ghost,” it turns out the prolific inventor had a formidable PR presence. “Basically, you can think of Edison as a sort of proto-Elon Musk,” Spalding writes. But unlike the Tesla, the rubber never met the road on Edison’s “Spirit Phone” for communicating with the dead. That didn’t keep Edison from claiming that the device would operate solely by scientific methods, however. And while he was ridiculed during his life for this idea, and biographers later claimed he couldn’t have been serious, Spalding unearthed a French version of a book of Edison’s writings that includes actual sketches for his design. 

Edison’s Ghosts can certainly be read from front to back, but you may find yourself so intrigued by some of the chapter titles that you decide to skip around. For what burgeoning philosopher can resist plunging right into “Confucius Was an Ugly Nerd With Low Self-Esteem”? Likewise, biology enthusiasts will hardly be able to resist turning first to “Charles Darwin: Glutton; Worm Dad; Murderer?”

Spalding includes chapters (and hilarious footnotes) about many other historical figures, including Leonardo da Vinci, Ada Lovelace, Marie Curie, Benjamin Franklin, Arthur Conan Doyle and Sigmund Freud. While the essays are tongue-in-cheek, they’re also well researched, informative and absolutely fun. Edison’s Ghosts will delight any science or history lover with a sense of humor.

Edison’s Ghosts will delight any science or history lover as it illuminates all the stupid things that famously smart people have done throughout history.
NonfictionWomen's HistoryHistory

First to the Front

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

If you haven’t heard of Dickey Chapelle, you’re not alone. But Lorissa Rinehart’s authoritative biography, First to the Front: The Untold Story of Dickey Chapelle, Trailblazing Female War Correspondent, makes it clear that this courageous photojournalist, who was the first female war correspondent to be killed in combat, deserves wider recognition.

Born Georgette Louise Meyer in 1918 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Chapelle had an early love of aviation and even studied for a time at MIT. After she flunked out of school, Chapelle’s parents sent her to live with her grandparents in Florida, where she got a job publicizing a Miami airshow. After being sent to Havana to cover another airshow, the ambitious Chapelle pitched a story to the New York Times. When the ace pilot crashed before her eyes, she raced to a phone booth to dictate the story. A chance encounter with a fellow journalist on the scene led to a job offer in New York City, where she took photography classes from an older photojournalist named Tony Chapelle. The two eventually married—and then divorced, after his violent behavior escalated in tandem with her growing success as a journalist.

Rinehart’s account follows Chapelle’s wide-ranging international career from Panama to the Pacific, to 1950s postwar Europe, to Laos, Vietnam and a host of other locations. Chapelle covered conflicts as well as humanitarian crises, and Rinehart details her exceptional courage, her understanding of Cold War politics and her unflinching commitment to telling the stories of people oppressed by harsh regimes or fighting for independence. 

Rinehart also explores the reasons why Chapelle is not well known despite her extraordinary career. Saying she was “ahead of her time” may sound like a platitude, but Rinehart demonstrates that Chapelle’s storytelling truly was different from many of her fellow journalists, who accused Chapelle of being obsessed with her career and not being objective. While some journalists relied heavily on government sources, Chapelle took an intense, immersive approach to stories, prioritizing “the voices, the lives, and the experiences of those she reported on,” Rinehart writes.

Chapelle died in 1965 while embedded with U.S. Marines in Vietnam. With her trademark black-rimmed glasses and pearl earrings, Chapelle was unforgettable, fearless and compassionate. At the time of her death at age 47, she had been reporting in conflict zones across the world for 25 years.

First to the Front is a valuable, long-overdue tribute to an American woman whose work and commitment to human rights is more relevant than ever.

Lorissa Rinehart’s authoritative biography makes it clear why Dickey Chapelle, a courageous photojournalist and the first female war correspondent to be killed in combat, deserves wider recognition.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

I Cannot Draw a Bicycle

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

In the follow-­up to her playful and witty I Cannot Draw a Horse, Charise Mericle Harper returns with another humorous, metafictional picture book about creativity. Harper’s clever illustrations and text contain multiple layers and connections, ensuring that children will enjoy I Cannot Draw a Bicycle for years.

The story begins simply, with words set against a graph-paper background. An unnamed narrator explains, “This is my shape,” indicating a rounded gray lump that resembles a gumdrop or a gravestone. That lump, however, can be transformed by the narrator into a lot of things, including a cat, a skateboard and a horse. The cat seems happy atop the skateboard, but the horse is harder to please, because this equine wants a bicycle. However, the narrator isn’t able to comply: “A bicycle is hard to draw. I cannot draw a bicycle.”

So shenanigans begin, as the cat, horse and narrator interact with one another through easy-to-read speech bubbles. While the cat might be fine with a “cool” substitute such as an icicle, the horse (with mulelike stubbornness) stays firm. Things are stuck at an impasse until the horse asks a most logical question: “Why is a bicycle so hard to draw?”

The answer, sure to draw peals of laughter from readers, makes clear that no one in this book is fully prepared to draw a bicycle. Nevertheless, everyone tries, harnessing creativity, showcasing collaboration and coming up with a giggle-inducing, unexpected resolution that seems destined to launch these characters into a future adventure.

Harper taps straight into the preschool funny bone, making I Cannot Draw a Bicycle an excellent choice for read-aloud storytime. With its spare text and clean, inviting design, this book also functions well for early readers. And by fostering shape recognition and an understanding of geometry, I Cannot Draw a Bicycle provides an excellent base for encouraging young artists to draw their own cat, horse or—who knows—maybe even a bicycle!

Charise Mericle Harper taps straight into the preschool funny bone, making I Cannot Draw a Bicycle an excellent, giggle-inducing choice for read-aloud storytime.
NonfictionWomen's HistoryHistory

Valiant Women

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Few of the myriad books about World War II have ever attempted to provide a comprehensive history of its 350,000 American servicewomen. Out of the dwindling female veterans alive today, many have never even been asked to provide their first-person accounts. While compiling Valiant Women: The Extraordinary American Servicewomen Who Helped Win World War II, Lena Andrews found that female veterans had often been led to feel their experiences were not worth preserving, as their service wasn’t “real war work.” After a vivid recounting of her work distributing supplies to men headed to the front, Merle Caples, 98, remarks, “Oh my god, there are people out there who still care about me?” In a vital and engrossing attempt to correct the record, Valiant Women convincingly demonstrates that “American women who donned military uniforms in World War II were . . . at the center of the Allied strategy for fighting and winning the war.”

Andrews, a CIA military analyst, searched for living veterans by perusing local newspapers for mentions of servicewomen honored at events such as centennial birthday celebrations. In addition to these moving interviews, she takes a thorough look at the history of and skepticism toward women’s service programs in the US military. After the Army and Navy established programs, the Coast Guard and Marine Corps followed, but the commander of the Marine Corps, Lieutenant General Thomas Holcomb, was suspicious of the whole idea and “entirely lacked the foresight to recognize the value in expanding the Corps to include nonwhite men and women.” Andrews also details the struggle led by two rival pilots Jacqueline Cochran and Nancy Harkness Love to establish a women’s flying corps in the US Army Air Forces. 

Possessing a clear narrative style and subject mastery, Andrews gives valuable context and meaning to these profiles of remarkable women, including Charity Adams, commander of the first Black WAC unit to serve abroad, and Dorothy Still, a Navy nurse in the Philippines, who spent three years as a prisoner of war with over 60 other women after the Japanese defeated American and Filipino forces on Bataan. 

Valiant Women provides a vital, authoritative account of an almost-forgotten history, reminding us of all the stories it is past time to remember. 

Valiant Women is a vital and engrossing attempt to correct the record and rightfully celebrate the achievements of female veterans of World War II.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Ludwig and the Rhinoceros

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

If you don’t see something, can it still exist? This engaging picture book takes inspiration from the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who once argued to his professor Bertrand Russell that one couldn’t prove there wasn’t a rhinoceros in the room. 

Enhanced by the vibrant blue, gold and green palette used by GOLDEN COSMOS (Berlin artists Doris Frieigofas and Daniel Dolz), Ludwig and the Rhinoceros: A Philosophical Bedtime Story (NorthSouth, $19.95, 9780735845275) opens with a red-haired Ludwig sitting on his bed at night and chatting with a large blue rhinoceros. However, when his father pops in to ask Ludwig whom he’s talking to, Ludwig answers, only to have his father assure the boy that there isn’t a rhinoceros—it’s just his imagination.

Ludwig directs his father to search in various places: in the dresser, under the bed and under the desk. While Ludwig’s father can’t see the rhinoceros, young readers will delight in pointing him out. (Ludwig’s blue friend even manages to snag a pair of briefs on his horn!) Matters soon come to a head as Ludwig challenges his dad to actually prove there isn’t a rhinoceros, using the example of the not-yet-risen moon to illustrate the notion that even if you don’t see something, it can still be there.

While at first glance Wittgenstein may seem a little advanced for a picture book, author Noemi Schneider has found a clever way of introducing philosophy to children. Adults will appreciate the back matter, which includes further context about Wittgenstein and his argument. 

This original offering makes for an unusual bedtime tale that combines humor and depth—just right for budding philosophers everywhere.

While at first glance Wittgenstein may seem a little advanced for a picture book, Noemi Schneider has found a clever way of introducing basic philosophical concepts and the notion of philosophy itself to young children.
NonfictionHistoryEuropean History

Mussolini’s Daughter

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Caroline Moorehead, author of the New York Times bestselling Resistance Quartet, brings her prodigious research and storytelling talents to Mussolini’s Daughter, her study of Edda Mussolini, the eldest and favorite child of Benito Mussolini and one of the most powerful women in 1930s Europe. In her foreword, Moorehead notes the challenges facing any biographer of the Mussolini family, including the difficulty of separating swirling myths from facts. Yet through her skillful mining of archival materials, personal papers and memoirs, Moorhead has created for readers—even ones previously unfamiliar with the rise of fascism in Italy—a nuanced portrait of a complex woman.

One of the pleasures of a deeply researched biography is being transported into the past through rich details that bring historical figures to life. Moorehead is masterful at this. For instance, we learn early on that in 1910, Edda’s mother, Rachele, already pregnant, defied her family and left home to live with Mussolini. The young couple walked five kilometers in a downpour, taking with them only “four sheets, four plates and six knives, spoons and forks.”

Moorehead writes that “Mussolini and Fascism made Edda what she was.” With this in mind, the author devotes considerable space to tracing Mussolini’s rising political career, which paralleled Edda’s youth. By the time Edda was 11, her father was the editor of a successful newspaper “and the leader of a quickly growing political movement.” In 1922, he became prime minister of Italy and set about consolidating power to become dictator.

In 1930, in an impressive ceremony Moorehead describes as “the wedding of the century,” glamorous, mercurial 19-year-old Edda married Count Galeazzo Ciano, son of one of the founders of the Fascist Party. Although she was part of a “golden couple,” Edda also had a fierce independent streak.

Moorehead spends ample time covering World War II and the ways in which the military conflict, Italy’s alliance with Germany and complex internal power struggles determined the fates of the two men closest to Edda. Despite her efforts to save him, her husband was executed for treason in January of 1944—an outcome Mussolini did little to prevent. Mussolini himself was killed in April 1945. Edda, meanwhile, escaped to Switzerland with her three children. Though for a time she professed to hate Mussolini, Edda once told an interviewer that her father “was the only man I ever really loved.”

Moorehead’s clear, compelling prose and sure-handed grasp of historical events combine to make Mussolini’s Daughter read like a page-turning thriller, one that will have special appeal for readers fascinated by European history, World War II and the conditions that gave rise to fascism.

Caroline Moorehead’s clear, compelling prose and sure-handed grasp of historical events combine to make Mussolini’s Daughter read like a page-turning thriller.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Walter Had a Best Friend

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

This deceptively simple picture book explores the emotions we feel when friendships end. Deborah Underwood’s story focuses on Walter, a rodent-ish fellow with white fur, round ears and a long pink tail. Walter’s best friend is Xavier, a yellow duck-like creature whose feet and flat beak are green.

The two friends do everything together. They hike, paint pictures, float in a rowboat and just enjoy sitting quietly. Their friendship changes, however, when a hedgehog named Penelope appears, and she and Xavier begin spending more time with each other. 

Gradually, Walter’s world is transformed. He experiences anger, loneliness and sadness as Xavier gravitates more and more toward Penelope. Especially evocative is a scene in which Penelope and Xavier have invited Walter to a ball game. It rains, and the new friends share an umbrella while Walter sits apart from them, miserable and wet. 

Underwood’s spare text provides ample space for illustrator Sergio Ruzzier’s surreal, otherworldly landscapes and bright pastel color palette. Ruzzier depicts the impact of Walter’s loss in approachable, moving images. For instance, we learn that Walter is quiet, “but it was a sad quiet. Not best friend quiet.” The accompanying spread shows Walter sitting alone on a dock; a dangling rope nearby suggests that the rowboat has been launched without him. He has lost not only his friend but also the pleasures they enjoyed together.

Just as Walter loses his friendship with Xavier slowly, his recovery is also slow, But he misses the activities he used to do with Xavier, so one bright day, when rays of sunshine beam through the closed curtains at his house, he just can’t resist the urge to go on a hike. Instead of taking the old trail, he strikes out on a new one—and discovers the promise of a new friendship along the way.

The book’s gentle pace, engaging artwork and lyrical yet straightforward text make this a comforting, reassuring read for young readers experiencing transitions at school or with friends. Walter Had a Best Friend is a gem.

When Walter’s best friend finds a new best friend, Walter’s world is transformed in this comforting, reassuring picture book.
Children's & YAYA FictionYA

We Are All We Have

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Author Marina Budhos has previously explored the experiences of immigrants, particularly Muslim teens after 9/11, in two acclaimed YA novels, Ask Me No Questions and Watched. We Are All We Have is set in 2019, after the U.S. Department of Justice implemented a zero-tolerance policy toward illegal immigration. The novel follows 17-year-old Rania, whose late father was a political journalist in Pakistan. Rania lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her mother and younger brother, Kamal, who was born in the U.S. As the novel opens, Rania is looking forward to spending the summer with friends before attending Hunter College on a scholarship she received for “literary promise.”

But Rania’s world is shattered in a single night when her mother is arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and sent to a detention facility in Pennsylvania. Rania and Kamal’s legal situation becomes even more complicated when the neighbor who agreed to serve as their guardian changes her mind, afraid of being deported herself. Before Rania can track down an estranged uncle who may be able to help, a neighbor reports her and Kamal for living without a guardian and they are taken to an understaffed shelter in Manhattan.

At the shelter, Rania meets Carlos, a young artist from Mexico. Carlos hatches a plan that will allow him, Rania and Kamal to escape the shelter and attend Rania’s graduation—and then keep on running. During her summer on the road, Rania uncovers secrets about her mother and the circumstances of her own birth. On Cape Cod, Carlos and Rania take on temporary jobs until they realize the only way to redeem their futures is to face the present.

We Are All We Have is compelling and vivid, filled with drama, family secrets and romance. Budhos conducted extensive research for the novel, which included visiting courtrooms and meeting with experts on immigration law. Her conversations revealed that “though we consider ourselves an immigrant nation, our bedrock ideal rests on a capricious and ever-changing set of laws and policies.” Budhos’ fully realized characters and urgent prose bring these laws into sharp focus for teen readers.

In this compelling, vivid novel, Rania’s world is shattered in a single night when her mother is arrested and detained by U.S. immigration officials.
NonfictionScienceAnimals

The Year of the Puppy

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

New York Times bestselling author Alexandra Horowitz (Our Dogs, Ourselves) has done it again. She’s created a heartwarming and personal story about dogs that seamlessly incorporates captivating science about our beloved canine companions. In The Year of the Puppy: How Dogs Become Themselves, Horowitz, a specialist in canine cognition and head of the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard University, follows the first year of a puppy’s life—her own family’s new puppy, as it happens.

In part one, Horowitz describes the birth and early development of their puppy, Quiddity (Quid). Many owners never experience the early weeks—or even years, with many rescues—of their dogs’ lives, and this section makes fascinating reading as Horowitz meets not just her puppy but the puppy’s mom: Maize, a young dog surrendered to a shelter in Georgia when her owners realized she was pregnant. Maize was transported to New York, where she was fostered by an experienced woman named Amy who took on responsibility for the new mom and her pups—11 in all, it turns out.

In part two, Horowitz and her family choose Quid as their own, and she traces the puppy’s weekly development and integration into their family, where every experience is new: new people, new big dogs, new cat, new house. Training at the outset consists of taking Quid out to pee every two hours and rewarding her for positive behaviors—though the puppy often moves through 12 behaviors in 10 seconds. Fortunately, there are also naps.

Horowitz writes with a gentle humor that any pet owner will appreciate. “After bringing a puppy home, that potential dog vanishes and is replaced by an actual biting, running, peeing, whining dog in our home every hour of every day,” she writes. “She bites the cat in the face and bothers the dogs, who have taken, rightfully, to just turning away in disdain.”

The book is more than an entertaining personal narrative, however. Along the way, Horowitz draws on her extensive knowledge to offer insights into canine behavior. She goes beyond training-focused instructional manuals to show that often what humans label as “misbehavior” is actually normal puppy behavior. We expect dogs to live in our world. But, as Horowitz chronicles one year in Quid’s life, she gently urges us to become more aware of the incredibly rich and complex world dogs inhabit. The better we understand our pooches, the more likely we are to succeed at providing a wonderful home for everyone.

It’s a given that for dog lovers, The Year of the Puppy is a must-read. But even cat lovers will find much to enjoy in this endearing scientific memoir.

Alexandra Horowitz has created another heartwarming and personal story that seamlessly incorporates captivating science about our canine companions.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Maya’s Song

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Two of America’s most distinguished figures in children’s literature combine their formidable talents to create a moving biography of the great Maya Angelou. In Maya’s Song, Newbery Honor author Renée Watson (Piecing Me Together) chronicles the pivotal milestones and emotional touchstones of Angelou’s extraordinary life in a series of lyrical free verse poems, lavishly illustrated with four-time Caldecott Honor recipient Bryan Collier’s vibrant watercolor and collage artwork. The result, like Angelou herself, is an American treasure.

In addition to plays, essays and poetry, Angelou penned seven autobiographical works, and it would be a challenge for any biographer to encompass all the details of her complex, eventful life. Watson handles this challenge easily in a 48-page picture book format.

Watson’s beautiful, heartfelt poems provide young readers with both historical and emotional context, while a concluding timeline provides factual highlights. In 1993, Angelou became the first woman and first Black person to present an original poem at a presidential inauguration. She achieved another first in 2022, when her likeness became the first portrait of a Black woman to be featured on the U.S. quarter.

Watson’s exquisite poems are enhanced by Collier’s evocative art. In his illustrator’s note, Collier (All Because You Matter) invites readers to examine the way he uses color, especially blue, to illuminate Angelou’s tumultuous childhood, which included a devastating sexual assault by her mother’s boyfriend. The trauma she experienced and the man’s subsequent murder left Angelou mute for five years. It’s impossible to tell Angelou’s life story without this event. Watson does so with sensitivity, telling readers that “When Maya was seven years old, / her mother’s boyfriend / hurt her body, hurt her soul,” placing the focus on Angelou’s recovery through literature, poetry and the love of her family, especially her grandmother and brother.

Angelou was many things: a poet, a dancer, a singer, a world traveler, an award-winning author and a civil rights activist who counted figures such as James Baldwin and Martin Luther King Jr. as friends. Most of all, she was an inspiration. In her author’s note, Watson describes being moved to tears the first time she heard Angelou speak. “I have held Maya Angelou’s words close to me my whole life,” she writes. “Her words guide me, heal me, inspire me.” Young readers who meet Angelou through Maya’s Song will surely look at her face on the U.S. quarter with a better understanding of the remarkable woman who earned such a tribute.

Through lyrical poems and lavish watercolor and collage artwork, Renée Watson and Bryan Collier create a moving biography of the remarkable Maya Angelou.
NonfictionScience

The Milky Way

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Yes, you read the title correctly. This is indeed an autobiography of our galaxy, and yes, it is nonfiction. The Milky Way’s debut book—a creative, humorous and enormously entertaining one at that—comes to us earthlings via Dr. Moiya McTier, who studied both mythology and astronomy at Harvard before earning her Ph.D. in astrophysics at Columbia University. 

The galaxy begins its life story this way: “Take a look around you, human. What do you see? Actually, don’t answer that. Why would I bother listening to you when I know you’ll get it wrong?” The Milky Way, it seems, is rather a stuck-up know-it-all. (Superior, omniscient, haughty—perhaps a bit like your cat. As Dr. McTier explains in the acknowledgements, whenever she needed to get into the Milky Way’s voice, she would look at her cat, Kosmo.) Although, once you stop to think about things from our galaxy’s perspective, it’s easy to see why. After all, the Milky Way is more than 13 billion Earth years old and home to more than 100 billion stars. Impressive, to say the least.

Read the Milky Way’s behind-the-scenes story of how an ancient galaxy managed to land a book deal.

And that’s just the beginning. In chapters covering its early years, growing pains, constellations and modern myths, the Milky Way details a page-turning life story, full of drama (massive black holes!), major changes (the death of stars!) and tumultuous relationships with neighboring galaxies, such as Andromeda. It is quite adept at explaining complex scientific concepts to us (vastly more ignorant) humans, but the most surprising aspect of this book is that the Milky Way has a buoyant sense of humor, as well as a passion for “inspiring others.”

As with any translation from another tongue, readers may marvel at the role of the translator in creating a book that is both informative and truly inspirational. Here, it’s clear Dr. McTier has harnessed the sense of marvel she felt as a child, when she imagined the sun and moon as celestial parents who watched over her and talked to her on a regular basis. That childlike wonder, combined with her expertise in mythology and astronomy, makes her the perfect human to assist in telling this story.

At any rate, since the Milky Way took the time to help us all understand more about our universe, it would be only polite to put this highly recommended title at the top of your reading list.

As told to Dr. Moiya McTier, the Milky Way details its page-turning life story, full of drama and humor.

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