Review by Booklist Review
Gr. 5^-8. Krull continues her Extraordinary Lives series, this time focusing on women in history from Cleopatra to modern-day powerhouses such as Burma's Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, and Rigoberta Menchu, the Guatemalan leader who drew the world's attention to Indian rights. It's much easier for Krull to maintain her usual sly wit when she's talking about Spain's Isabella I (who only bathed twice in her life) than about San Suu Kyi, who is a virtual prisoner in her home. Consequently, there's a slightly discordant tone to the text. It's Kathryn Hewitt's always intriguing, amusingly detailed, full-page caricatures that draw the compendium together. The range of subjects--from Joan of Arc and Nzingha, fierce leader of present-day Angola, to Golda Meir and Wilma Mankiller--is wide, but the two or so pages devoted to each individual contain only enough for short reports, and the information is sometimes vague (how, for instance, did Eleanor of Aquitaine manage to marry the king of the England after leaving the king of France only two months earlier?). Children who want to know more can look to the selected bibliography; there are no source notes. --Ilene Cooper
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-8-As with other titles in this nicely thought-out series, Krull whets readers' appetites with brief biographies of some amazing individuals. Most of these women will be familiar to students, but a few obscure figures are introduced. The writing tends toward gossip in places. (Isabella I of Spain reportedly took only two baths in her lifetime.) Like gossip, each chapter is enticing. A full-page caricature of the subject opens each chapter. The stories are arranged chronologically, beginning with Cleopatra, who reportedly spoke eight languages, and concluding with Guatemalan leader Rigoberta Mench#, who fights for native Indian rights. "Ever After" sections reveal aftereffects of each person's contribution to history. The gaps left by the absence of Margaret Thatcher and Benazir Bhutto are filled by the more obscure likes of Nzingha, Gertrude Bell, and Aung San Suu Kyi. Don Nardo's Women Leaders of Nations (Lucent, 1998) aptly complements Extraordinary Women. The jacket art offers evidence of the fun inside-Queen Victoria looks not amusedly at Marie Antoinette toying with her riches. Catherine holds an "I AM GREAT" sign. Joan of Arc chats with Eleanor of Aquitaine. And Cleopatra walks like an Egyptian. A captivating browsers' delight and a jumping-off point for report writers.-Anne Chapman Callaghan, Racine Public Library, WI (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
(Intermediate, Middle School) Andrea Davis Pinkney Let It Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters; illus. by Stephen Alcorn 107 pp. Gulliver/Harcourt 9/00 isbn 0-15-201005-X 20.00 (Intermediate, Middle School) In writing about Elizabeth I and her artful ability to elude marriage, Krull remarks, ""She was always deliciously in control."" The same accolade might be given to Krull: with her trusted artist companion of five previous `Lives' books (presidents, athletes, artists, writers, and musicians), Krull shows herself in command of her material, and having a confection of a time. Seemingly disparate elements are tellingly brought together. About peace activist and ardent suffragist Jeanette Rankin, Krull writes: ""Famous for her lemon meringue pie, she befriended children from the neighborhood, seeking their opinions, sharing stories of her life""; about Golda Meir, ""She had four or five bodyguards and was more afraid of blindness than of death-during times of danger she would cover her eyes."" These sentences capture the spirit of the collection: a pinch of this, a sprinkling of that. Except for Eleanor Roosevelt, who as perhaps the ""most influential woman of all time"" is allotted five pages, the histories of these twenty larger-than-life women are condensed into two or three pages. To further assert their subjects' influence as world-class citizens, several of Hewitt's inventive, gently caricatured portraits, all with oversized heads, rest on globes (Eleanor of Aquitaine rides horseback over Europe; West African queen Nzingha dances over Africa). The legendary Harriet Tubman, whose landscape quilt drapes to shape the globe on which she stands, is the single figure who also appears in Andrea Davis Pinkney's handsomely designed Let It Shine. Stephen Alcorn's more emotionally powerful abstract art portrays Tubman, one hand resting on a railroad track, the other touching the North Star in a dramatic diagonal. Arranged, like the Krull, in chronological order of birth, Pinkney's book focuses on ten Black Women Freedom Fighters. Although, as one might expect, Pinkney includes Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and Rosa Parks, she states her intention to ""put a new spin on some of the tried-and-true sheroes of human equality, and to introduce some of those who have had just as strong an impact on social justice but whose praises have not been sung loudly enough."" In her passion to reveal the strength of these remarkable women, Pinkney rises to moments of linguistic power: often, colloquial language affirms a powerful cadence (""She didn't shy back for nobody""); at other times a strong original image carries her meaning (about the success of the Montgomery bus boycott: ""Black people sat in the front, enjoying their view of justice""). Occasionally, however, overwriting obscures the subjects. Whereas the text occasionally falters, Alcorn's extraordinary bold tableaux, framed like stage pieces, consistently declare their own individuality as well as that of their subjects. Both collections will likely serve their aim: to, in Pinkney's words, ""keep one's eye on those prizes that will lead to a better world"" and to entice readers toward more fleshed-out biographies. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Well-behaved women rarely make history is the pendant to this collection of 20 brief biographies in what is now the masterly style of this dynamite teams previous Lives of . . . books. Krull packs an astonishing amount of information in three to five pages of biography for these female rulers, smoothly tucking in interesting bits: the English most outraged at Joan of Arcs wearing mens clothing; Catherine the Greats fondness for intellectual young men; Nzingha the West African queens miraculous escapes up to the age of 82. She clearly defines when historical gossip might have skewed the real story, as with Marie Antoinette and the Chinese empress Tzu-hsi, but doesnt shrink from sometimes unpleasant truths such as Gertrude Bells suicide or Indira Gandhis assassination. Hewitts illustrations remain dazzling: the oversized heads of the full-page figures sport headgear eminently suitable: Jeannette Rankin wears the Capitol dome and Aung San Suu Kyi her trademark flowers. Artifacts related to the womens stories appear as incidental images. Fabulous reading, great for research, deliciously and subversively feminist, this will sit happily on the shelf with the presidents, artists, musicians, and others this duo has covered so well. (bibliography) (Biography. 8-12)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
