My Fellow Americans: A Family Album - Hardcover

Provensen, Alice

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0152766421 ISBN 13: 9780152766429

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1995

Synopsis

A Caldecott Medal-winner presents a fascinating "family album" of American history and culture, depicting the words, deeds, and faces of an eclectic gathering of Americans, from Pocahontas and John Winthrop to Al Capone and Leonard Bernstein.

About this title

About the Author

Alice and Martin Provensen have been honored by the Art Books for Children Citation of the Brooklyn Museum, by the Gold Medal for illustration of the Society of Illustrators, by exhibitions at the American Institute of Graphic Arts, and by being included on the New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books of the Year list on nine occasions.

Reviews

Grade 4-7?In a format similar to The Buck Stops Here (HarperCollins, 1990), Provensen presents an album of famous Americans, no longer living, who have shaped this country in many ways. Here, rebels and religious leaders, artists and educators, free thinkers and financiers, patriots and rogues gather for group portraits amidst neat, hand-lettered labels and lists of their accomplishments. Beneath each grouping of figures Provensen has added an appropriate or inspiring quotation. Each page, with its India-ink drawings and soft-hued colorings against flat white backgrounds, offers a different arrangement of faces and words, placed under thought-provoking headings such as "Radical Reformers" and "Mega-Millionaires." The endpapers feature large postage-stamp-style squares in which the author has placed individuals who are difficult to categorize but well worth honoring. What fun to roam through these pages, identifying known figures, and reading the many accomplishments of the men and women of varied races and national origins. An appendix of "Observations and Reflections," adds anecdotes and historical information about each of the groups and explains Provensen's reasons for including these people in her "American family."?Shirley Wilton, Ocean County College, Toms River, NJ
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Provensen (The Buck Stops Here) curates a highly personal gallery of American historical figures in this eclectic, large-format volume. "Not all these Americans are honored in our national imagination, but they live in mine," she explains in an author's note. She groups her subjects by their careers, callings or causes they championed, labeling her assemblages with headings like "American Architects: The Shapes of Democracy" or "The Magnetic West: Pathfinders, Settlers, & Image Makers." Provensen renders their likenesses in India ink and oil in her characteristically candid style, but the words or phrases with which she embellishes these portraits may puzzle young readers (e.g., Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, described as "the proletarian Joan of Arc," says, "We want bread and roses too"; Alice Paul, founder of the National Woman's Party, rides in a vehicle labeled "Prison Special"). Quotations from individuals associated with the various themes run at the bottom of each busy page, but their meaning may also elude the young, as when Susan Sontag comments on the purpose of art. The author concludes this curious book with five pages of "Observations & Reflections" that offer (in a tiny typeface) an informal, subjective commentary on each biographical cluster. All ages.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 4^-6. In the large, square format of her earlier book The Buck Stops Here: the Presidents of the United States (1990), Provensen now invites readers to explore her American family album. Since she broadens the concept of family to include any notable American (excluding the living), the album includes hundreds of people, not to mention Lassie and Rin Tin Tin. She groups them by subject, captures their likeness in small portraits, and describes some of them in a few words or telling quotations. Subject groupings include abolitionists, expatriates, scoundrels, financiers, humanitarians, ecologists, and photographers. The large format offers the flexibility to include many people on a large, double-page spread or to use a page to spotlight one person. Don't miss the endpapers, where Elvis Presley, Kate Smith, and Malcolm X keep company with Alexander Graham Bell and Dr. Seuss. Provensen's cameo portraits and other illustrations--ink drawings with oil paints--reflect a sure sense of line, color, and composition. This mammoth, idiosyncratic undertaking succeeds in providing a backward glance at American culture in all its quirky originality and energy. Carolyn Phelan

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0152766421
• ISBN 13: 9780152766429
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 61