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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake) | J 921 KENNEDY | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | J 921 KENNEDY | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | E 921 KENNEDY | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Valley Library (Lakeland) | J 921 KENNEDY | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
The New York Times bestselling team that brought readers Barack in 2008 presents this picture book biography of John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States of America. JFK tells how a little boy grew up to be president in a story about hope and courage and the power of words. It details JFK's childhood as well as his presidency and includes the Cuban missile crisis, the civil rights movement, the Camelot years, and a firsthand account of his assassination. This nonfiction picture book is an excellent choice to share during homeschooling, in particular for children ages 4 to 6. It's a fun way to learn to read and as a supplement for activity books for children.
JFK's is a story that has been told by many voices. Acclaimed picture book biographer Jonah Winter offers his own voice and memories about JFK and his significance in this heartfelt personal profile, illustrated in vibrant detail by award-winning artist AG Ford.
Author Notes
Children's author and illustrator Jonah Winter was born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1962. He has created many popular books, including works about baseball and biographies of famous individuals including Frida Kahlo, Roberto Clemente, and Barack Obama.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 2-The initials that make up the title of this admiring picture-book biography send a message to its readers: the smiling man on the cover was so important that even today, people recognize those three letters. The narrative begins with the author's personal connection to President John F. Kennedy, a glimpse of him in a parade in Dallas, Texas, on the day of the assassination. Winter was only a year old, but, he says, he's heard the story often. After these opening scenes, he provides a chronological summary of Kennedy's life, from sickly childhood in the shadow of a "perfect" older brother through a successful, if short, adult life of public service. Two accomplishments highlighted are writing Profiles in Courage and averting nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Like this team's Barack (HarperCollins, 2008), this title verges on homage. Several spreads show Kennedy in front of admiring crowds, including a green mall packed with spectators at his inauguration (the scene shows no trace of the eight inches of snow that fell the night before). Rockwell-like vignettes show the young Joe, Jr. playing football and the young Jack reading about Camelot; gold-framed portraits show the two as war heroes. In keeping with Kennedy's own carefully crafted image, the sun always shines on his family. For the youngest historians, however, this is an appealing introduction to the Kennedy legend.-Kathleen Isaacs, Children's Literature Specialist, Pasadena, MD (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Winter opens this picture-book biography of John F. Kennedy with his 1963 assassination and a striking bit of personal history: just a year old, Winter himself was there that day in Dallas: "I watched his car pass by, watched him waving to the crowds of cheering people, watched him getting smaller and smaller as the car drove on." Beginning the book with tragedy allows Winter to conclude it with a sense of hope and promise, after whisking readers on a tour of select moments in Kennedy's life, from sickly daydreamer who "loved words" to war hero, senator, and president. Throughout, Winter emphasizes how Kennedy's charisma and eloquence served him both in campaigning for the presidency and in diffusing situations like the Cuban Missile Crisis. Ford, who collaborated with Winter on 2008's Barack, contributes fairly static paintings, several based on iconic photographs (a b&w image of Kennedy debating Nixon on TV; a 1931 photo of the Kennedy family on the beach in Hyannis Port). A rosy and somewhat thin account of Camelot. Ages 4-8. Illustrator's agent: Steven Malk, Writers House. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Winter begins his biography reminiscing about seeing JFK in Dallas in 1963, just before he was assassinated. The adulatory volume then retraces Kennedy's rise to political greatness, focusing on his "'charisma,' the power to inspire and excite people." Winter's personal affection for his subject is obvious, but that adds some emotional impact. Ford's realistic paintings present a glossy picture of American "royalty." (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
An homage to the 35th president of the United States, marking the 50th anniversary of his assassination. Winter frames his narrative with personal statements, opening with an anecdote that he was a baby watching on his father's shoulders in Dallas on November 22 and concluding with a gushy testimonial. In between, he covers the litany of Kennedy's sickly childhood, World War II heroism, presidential campaign and three years in office, playing into the Kennedy mythology without restraint. The story of the older brother killed in combat and the second son assuming the political mantle is more legend than fact, and Kennedy's support of the civil rights movement was more conservative than implied. The crux of the West Virginia primary was whether or not a Catholic could carry a Protestant state, not economics. In addition, the Camelot aura arose from an interview Jacqueline Kennedy gave to Theodore White, not from JFK's childhood reading. Winter does not mention the space program but does devote a page to the Cuban missile crisis. He concludes that JFK was flawed, but "his words and his spirit live on." The only sourcing is one website recommended for further reading. The brevity of the form and the youth of the audience is no excuse for hagiography instead of history. Ford's full-color paintings reproduce period photographs, some making a very good-looking family appear singularly unattractive. Overwrought and flawed history accompanied by unappealing illustrations. (Picture book/biography. 5-8)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
The full-face cover portrait, its subject sporting a toothy grin, leads young readers into this biography of John F. Kennedy. Winter makes the story personal by explaining that JFK was president when he was born in 1962. Then, dramatically, he tells how, as a one-year-old, he was taken to see President Kennedy and Jackie riding in a Dallas motorcade. Hours later, JFK was dead. The book then moves back in time, introducing Jack as a sickly daydreamer, often in competition with his older brother, Joe. Kennedy's career is highlighted with emphasis on the inauguration, and the major moments of his presidency, with a bit about family life. The text does a good job of introducing children to Kennedy, but it is overpowered in places by the acrylic paintings that take up most of the spreads. Sometimes the dramatic art really catches Kennedy, but often there is a stiffness or unintentional comic quality to the faces; the picture of the 1960 debates makes it seem as if Kennedy is laughing at Nixon. Still, there's little for the age group, and this appealing title fills a need.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
"AWAY BACK IN my childhood, the earliest days of my being able to read," Abraham Lincoln nostalgically remembered on the eve of his first inauguration, "I got hold of a small book Weems' 'Life of Washington.' " The future president never forgot its vivid accounts of the battles and heroes of the Revolutionary War, not to mention the causes for which the founders fought. "I recollect thinking then, boy even though I was," he reminisced, "that there must have been something more than common that those men struggled for." The book's stories "fixed themselves on my memory," he proudly added, acknowledging that "these early impressions last longer than any others." It is entirely possible that some other future president, boy or girl, may cast eyes on these four works of presidential biography and poetry, inviting the question: Will any of the books inspire young readers to revere and emulate - or, just as usefully, question and critique - their subjects? It's probably too much to expect. Modern juvenile biographies hardly strive for the Weems effect. They are mercifully shorter than that notoriously bloated tome, and far less hagiographic. It is fair to admit, on the other hand, that young Abe Lincoln would not have liked books with "an edge," just as today's young readers would never stand for the reverential bloviating in Weems's megaselling bible of myths. Yet even Lincoln would have appreciated the beautiful and often amusing color illustrations that accompany the best of today's kid-lit biographies. In Lincoln's day, a stilted engraving of a miniature George Washington manfully admitting he had cut down his father's cherry tree was about as visually daring as things got. Happily, no such restraints inhibit the acclaimed artist-writer Maira Kalman, whose exuberant Matisse-like style, eye for unusual detail, and disarming bluntness enliven her breezy and typically offbeat life of Thomas Jefferson. She talks children's language, too. Her subject is interested in "everything," she enthuses in a text overflowing with capital letters and emphatic script "I mean it. Everything." So is Kalman. She illustrates and explicates on everything from Jefferson's freckles (20 of them in all, she thinks), formidable linguistic talents, collecting mania, green thumb, fondness for ice cream, inventiveness and inexhaustible energy. Then, once she has us ensnared in her whimsical world, she hits us with five blunt pages on the horrors of slavery, calmly and cannily introducing the subject with a spare interior view of a cramped slave cabin, followed by a busy depiction of enslaved cooks tending Jefferson's kitchen, which he enters obliviously each week, she tells us, merely to wind the grandfather clock. It's about as much as readers aged 5 to 8 should be expected to absorb about Jefferson's - and his country's - shameful hypocrisy without having a sleep-inducing bedtime story descend into a nightmare-evoking all-nighter. Kalman, a subtle but shrewd moralizer, is right on the mark in summarizing Jefferson as "optimistic and complex and tragic and wrong and courageous." Her book is hypnotically charming, abounding with striking little details that children will remember. Who wouldn't be enthralled to know that the author of the Declaration of Independence had blazing red hair, liked peas, counted to 10 when he was angry, and had his frayed coats mended with old socks? C. F. Payne's soft-toned illustrations, which grace Doreen Rappaport's lovely little volume on Theodore Roosevelt, prove no less gripping, although they hardly approach a Kalmanesque "edge." The text inevitably offers classic "weakling to heman" inspiration, following young Teddy (in truth not so nicknamed until he met his future wife, we're told) as he transforms from nearsighted nerd to Energizer Bunny workaholic. Rappaport, who is strongest on Roosevelt's childhood years, portrays the grown-up T.R. as a crusader without warts, reforming the corrupt New York Police Department, achieving military glory with the Rough Riders, and busting selfish corporate trusts. The book sidesteps Roosevelt's tendency to use "bully" as both a catchword and a political tactic, and brushes past his anticlimactic 1912 try for a White House comeback - Doris Kearns Goodwin may now breathe a sigh of relief - but Rappaport is no less persuasive than Kalman in evoking the virtues of energy and curiosity. And Payne's pictures advance the text with spirit and inventiveness: The double-page illustration showing President Roosevelt lassoing a gigantic fist gripping a wad of cash, to name one, neatly evokes T.R.'s crusading spirit while wordlessly critiquing the American mania for wealth. With similar proficiency, the illustrator AG Ford's John Currin-like realism makes Jonah Winter's new biography, "JFK," sparkle like a Life magazine collectors' edition, but here it is the text that produces the true startle effect. Yes, of course, we will be told that John F. Kennedy, too, adored study, exercise and family fun, but Winter opens his account at the end of the story with a whale of a first-person revelation: He was a 1-year-old perched on his father's shoulders peering at the Dallas motorcade on Nov. 22, 1963, just a few minutes before the president lost his life. Winter watched Kennedy "waving to the crowds of cheering people, watched him getting smaller and smaller as the car drove on." Could a 1-year-old really be left with such vivid impressions? A reality check would be superfluous. Amid the recent avalanche of 50th-anniversary assassination rehash, how many other authors can offer such an extraordinarily personal connection to the tragedy? It's been a few years since I've read bedtime books to my grandson - he now reads to me - but I would have happily chosen all of the above to read to my own future president (and then tried stealing Kalman's for my own bookshelf). After all, what could be more nourishing and soothing than a dose of inspiring success stories leavened by the occasional, if sugarcoated, dose of reality? For variety, the poems in "Rutherford B. Who Was He?" will surely entertain any little insomniac even if the sometimes tortured rhymes won't soon supplant Dr. Seuss. Still, one has to give Marilyn Singer credit for rhyming "drudge" and "pudge" for Taft, "underrated" and "celebrated" (Carter), "jazz cat" and "New Democrat" (Clinton), and "Afghanistan" and "Yes, we can!" (guess who?). Suppose, as in the case of my grandson, it takes at least three books on one soothing subject to elicit grudging consent for lights-out. From an hour's immersion in these four adorable volumes of presidential lore, one encouraging common theme emerges: Jefferson "read many books," Teddy Roosevelt "gobbled up books," and John F. Kennedy "loved words." The lesson is: Read, and then read some more. These particular titles would not be a bad place to begin. HAROLD HOLZER is the author of "Lincoln: How Abraham Lincoln Ended Slavery in America," the officialyoung readers' companion book to the Steven Spielberg film.
