Juvenile Nonfiction: Josephine, Patricia Hruby Powell, Christian Robinson

Got some new books into the library, and this one was a Junior Library Guild "premier selection" book, and it's about Josephine Baker (who was awesome, and horribly treated in America) so I thought I'd take a look.

Josephine
Patricia Hruby Powell, illustrated by Christian Robinson
ISBN: 9781452103143
Biography of Josephine in free verse and odd naive illustrations

Bad stuff first - the art style is not my favorite.  The wobble-armed figures and strange round-headed audience and kindergarten-style landscapes just didn't do it for me.  I'm sure lots of people will really love the spunk and liveliness of the pictures, and the freedom from representative human form, but it wasn't for me.  Sorry, Mr Robinson.


The text was really interesting - a spare progression of free verse, no rhymes, but a lot of powerful word-choices, and lots of SHOUTING with capital letters.  It really made me feel like someone was Tumblrizing a biography for fun.  It's an interesting approach, and I think that it works overall, although there were times where I thought that clarity of narration slipped in favor of keeping the text relatively sparse.  I especially was struck by the handling of her various marriages; first at fifteen to a Pullman porter, whereupon she met and married him in the space of three lines, left him by the start of the next page, ignored him completely for 36 pages, then divorced him in one stanza:

"The very first thing,"
She divorced Willie Baker -
ended that long-ago marriage."

Then the millionaire fly-boy who she met, married, and divorced in four lines (he doesn't even get a name).

Then finally she marries her orchestra leader, who does get a name, but only two lines before he's dropped completely in favor of learning about the children she adopts as her Rainbow Tribe.

Wait - what?  Did she love any of them?  Were they jealous?  Why marry someone in the first place if she's going to immediately leave town or if he's not in favor of her performing?  Did she have biological kids with anyone?

There were several instances like this (none quite so glaring) where I thought that just a little more background (the war effort) or a few extra lines (her final American tour) might have aided understanding.

Overall, really interesting, although I feel for the poor kid who tries to use block quotes from this strange creature to back up their biography assignment in class.