Book Buds Kidlit Reviews

Recovered history

The Golden Flower

by Nina Jaffe; illustrated by Enrique O. Sanchez

The Taino were the first people of Puerto Rico and this is a “recovered story” from their culture. This creation myth about the island starts with a small boy who plucks some seeds from the wind, which sprouts a dense forest atop a mountain. A golden pumpkin breaks open to let the ocean gush forth; the mountain becomes the Taino’s island home, surrounded by the teeming sea.

Sanchez completes this peek into a vanished culture with a tropical palette, with its warm, vivid colors, and primitive, blocky figures. But without a single epic character to follow, the story falls short of being compelling and fails to fire the imagination.

Rating: *\*\

Floats my boat

Pig on the Titanic

by Gary Crew; illustrated by Bruce Whatley

I braced for an idiotic fictional story, much like the movie, only with a talking pig. I’m happy to report I was wrong. This is the true story of a wind-up toy that cheered up kids on the lifeboats after the Titanic’s sinking.

Maxixe (pronounces mah-SHEESH) plays a French dance tune by the same name and belongs to a wealthy fashion buyer, Edith Rosenbaum. When she refuses a spot on a lifeboat, a crew member mistakes the bundle in her arms for a baby and tosses it in. It’s the toy, of course, and a startled Rosenbaum clambers in.

The story’s told from the pig’s point of view, which sets itself up as a story for children, but without being cutesy or overdone. The worst enemy here would be a maudlin or melodramatic treatment, which Crew artfully avoids with spare prose and a brisk telling.

The artwork is stunningly lifelike, with Whatley dwelling lovingly – if darkly – on the Titanic’s details, no less a feat even if we did all see the movie and its almost-life-size replica of the fated ship.

Rating: *\*\

A buccaneer birthday

Olive's Pirate Party

by Roberta Baker; illustrated by Debbie Tilley

No little girl should grow up without a great Aunt Tiffany to take her to the opera and serve a proper cup of tea. But can she host a pirate party? Olive’s turning seven and her favorite great aunt’s offered to host her birthday bash. Olive frets her plans have “walked the plank.”

Never underestimate those geezers, though. Aunt Tiff has a few things to teach her little niece about love, not to mention kick-ass buccaneer costumes.

This is a sequel to “No Ordinary Olive,” and part of a universe of characters that includes Lizard Walinsky of an eponymous title. I haven’t read others in this series, but this one’s harmless and charming enough, evoking an “awww” or two.

Rating: *\*\

The good guys were black

This School is not White!

by Doreen Rappaport; illustrated by Curtis James

Northern whites often have amnesia when it comes to the civil rights movement. In movies and TV shows, we like to see ourselves depicted as the lone heroes standing up to the lynch mob or the corrupt Southern judge, defending Po’ Black Folk from their redneck oppressors.

In reality, African Americans usually had to go it alone.

In 1965, the Carter family of Drew, Mississippi decided they wanted something better for their kids than sharecropping, and sent seven of them off to hell each morning. The corridors and classrooms of the town’s formerly all-white schools rang with taunts, jeers and threats.

The Carters held their ground despite their children’s agony, losing their jobs and their home and having to rely on charity from civil rights groups and Quakers. They succeeded after several years and countless tears.

A true story, the book ends with "where are they now" blurbs for a feel-good ending. But it's the prose itself, with its lilting, almost singsong imitation of black English, as if putting it in Mae Bertha and Matthew Carter's own words, that makes for such a compelling and unforgettable read.

Rating: *\*\*\