Picture Book Biography Round-Up #3

Back again with another picture book round up–this time featuring some pop culture folks–including a folk artist, a singer, an author and…Madame Alexander.

You Gotta Meet Mr. Pierce: The Storied Life of Folk Artist Elijah Pierce by Chiquita Mullins Lee and Carmella Van Vlett, illustrated by Jennifer Mack-Watkins

What a great representation of an artist through the art of a picture book biography! I had never heard of Elijah Pierce, who was a wood carver and artist, but this was a fun narrative-based biography told through the eyes of a young boy visiting him in his barbershop, learning about his work, and then bringing his own son to see it. It’s not the MOST informative overall biography, but it definitely excites you to learn more and has some good backmatter.

Debbie’s Song: The Debbie Friedman Story by Ellen Leventhal, illustrated by Natalia Grebtsova

This was a really interesting, unknown story to me—the story of a Jewish woman who changed the face, and sound, of Jewish music. Debbie Friedman’s life is covered pretty extensively in these pages which follow her love of music throughout her life and her dedication to it and the way it was tangled in her faith, even when other people told her to stop or doubted her.. It’s an interesting story, but a pretty common illustration style that I’ve seen a lot in female biographies of a certain type—light and airy, kind of weird faces sometime, but overall the illustrations don’t really engage you.

Madame Alexander: The Creator of the Iconic American Doll by Susan Goldman Rubin, illustrated by Sarah Dvojack

This was another fun tale—I didn’t know much about the history behind the Madame Alexander dolls, and found this a pretty clear-cut, focused biography. The illustrations are crisp and clean and fit the story well. It’s a more verbose prose, and certainly not flourishing, but it gets the job done. Some pretty er…historical points are just jumped over, including bank collapses and war etc, but it works out because the dolls stay the focus. I do wish we had seen even MORE of the real dolls in the backmatter, but I can’t wait to recommend this to my friends who are obsessed with American Girl doll history, haha. I had no idea Madame Alexander was Jewish, for example, and bet many others don’t know her family’s history either.

Arthur Who Wrote Sherlock by Linda Bailey, illustrated by Isabelle Follath

What a lovely book! Beautifully illustrated–truly gorgeous–with a style that fits hte story, and this is part biography, part story itself. We meet Arthur Conan Doyle and follow his life in this present-tense recounting, but we go beyond just ‘Sherlock was published, people liked it” and explore how Doyle killed off Sherlock beause he was too popular, how he brought him back, etc. I truly have never read an OG Sherlock story, but was tickled by this book and really enjoyed it! Definitely for older readers, maybe even 10, but also..GORGEOUS illustrations.