Bound To Stay Bound

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Booklist - 02/01/2014 Kerley and Fotheringham are known for their upbeat picture books about famous historical figures. This work about Ralph Waldo Emerson—someone who is probably not known to many children—is a tale of deep love for his home and community in Concord, Massachusetts. After a fire destroys Emerson’s house, neighbors rally around him, returning some of the generosity and affection received from his family over the years. This has the same format and style of Kerley and Fotheringham’s earlier works, with colorful illustrations featuring cartoon-style figures in a pleasing, open layout. The brief text focuses on the story of Emerson’s community life and doesn’t bother much with why he was famous, which works well for the storytelling even as it may leave some readers wondering just who he was. Some of his famous quotes are placed in the endpapers and woven into the story. Back matter includes a helpful author’s note and a page of suggestions to encourage readers to examine their own lives and values. - Copyright 2014 Booklist.

School Library Journal - 02/01/2014 Gr 2–4—This introduction to the life of Ralph Waldo Emerson will help readers begin to understand the thoughts and values of this great American thinker. Emerson grows up in Boston, but yearns to make a life closer to nature where he can surround himself with books and friends. He finds a perfect home in Concord, Massachusetts, where he and his wife raise a family. Emerson eagerly becomes a part of the community, even playing the role of hog reeve, gathering up the town's runaway pigs. After collecting his thoughts in journals, Emerson begins traveling across the country to lecture, attracting visitors from around the world to his doorstep. A house fire later in his life devastates Emerson, but allows the town to demonstrate their affection for him as they rebuild his home. Emerson, who is likely little known to younger students, is brought to life in an approachable biography. The colorful depictions of Emerson are warm, cheerful, and full of movement. Children will love the cartoonlike illustrations that make Emerson seem like a superhero as he dives into oversized books and flies through the sky on another giant tome. Quotes from his writings are liberally used to illuminate moments of his life, allowing readers to get to know the man through his own words. The author's note provides further information about Emerson and his philosophy of thought. An eye-catching, kid-friendly biography that is a wonderful addition to any collection.—Marian McLeod, Convent of the Sacred Heart, Greenwich, CT - Copyright 2014 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Bulletin for the Center... - 03/01/2014 In this compact biography of Emerson, Kerley carefully selects those elements of Emerson’s life that contribute to her tightly crafted narrative arc that stresses the hope, community and optimism required to create the life of one’s dreams. Omitting mention of Emerson’s grief over losing his first wife and the death of his five-year-old son, she focuses entirely on his success in building a comfortable home of his own in Concord with his second wife, surrounded by natural beauty, crammed with books, and often visited by friends and children with whom he could share ideas and hospitality. As a result, Emerson’s joie de vivre explodes from the pages as the book captures his take-charge approach to crafting the kind of life he envisioned after he left his impoverished childhood in Boston. When his beloved home is ravaged by a fire, the community repays his genial hospitality by responding with vigor and restoring the house while the elderly Emerson is in Europe trying to overcome his loss but yearning for home. The bold, digital illustrations employ a mid-century palette of sunset, avocado, and cerulean, with firmly sketched black linework that recalls linocuts; they effectively play at the intersection of representation and symbolism, with cartooned versions of Emerson walking around his village and its wooded environs interacting with neighbors and friends, but also literally diving into tree-sized books and walking and flying jubilantly over maps of the world to symbolize his virtual and actual travels. The visual metaphors communicate both emotion and action in ways highly accessible to young readers, and Kerley extends the message by including a page of activities and advice to help children inventory their own spirits so that they, like Emerson, can “build therefore [their] own world[s].” This and other memorable Emerson quotations are included on the endpapers and at the beginning and end of the book itself; an author’s note fills in missing pieces in the biography and provides source notes for the quotations. KC - Copyright 2014 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

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