Hairdo - Hardcover

Freeman, Ruth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0823415228 ISBN 13: 9780823415229

Publisher: Holiday House, 2002

Synopsis

Offers a factual and amusing review of the many different types of hairstyles that people have worn throughout the years, from dyes and wigs to high-rise hair and beyond.

About this title

About the Authors

Ruth Freeman Swain has been a preschool instructor and has taught creative movement. Her first book for children was Bedtime!, a National Council of Social Studies Notable Book. She lives in blue Hill, Maine.

Cat Bowman Smith has illustrated many highly praised books, including Bedtime!, by Ruth Freeman Swain, and Nine for California and Boom Town, both by Sonia Levitin. She lives in Pittsford, New York.

Reviews

Grade 1-4-A romp through hairstyles from the ancient Egyptians to the Greeks to the Romans. The text then jumps to 16th- through 18th-century Europe, and then shifts to Native Americans and 17th-century China. The breezy compilation of trivia takes readers up to the present day. Smith's cartoons are well suited to the lighthearted tone of the narrative and show 18th-century grimacing women scratching piled-up-high hair with knitting needles and 19th-century Chinese in America with queues. A page is devoted to Grace Bedell's letter to Abraham Lincoln advising him to grow a beard. A three-page section called "Hairy Information" is appended. Youngsters can pick up this book for fun and learn a little about the subject. However, Karin Badt's Hair There and Everywhere (Children's, 1994) is a superior treatment of the same material.
Barbara Buckley, Rockville Centre Public Library, NY
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Finally, Hairdo!: What We Do and Did to Our Hair by Ruth Freeman Swain, illus. by Cat Bowman Smith, playfully provides a historical and cross-cultural look at the styles that have defined society, such as an Egyptian party favor ("At evening parties, special guests were given cones of perfumed beeswax to put on top of their heads"), the wigs of Louis XIV ("to hide his thinning hair") and Native American girls' "squash blossoms" formed by coiling the hair above each ear. Ages 6-10.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

K-Gr. 2. From ancient Egypt to seventeenth-century France to America in the 1960s and today, this collection of facts and trivia is an entertaining, whirlwind world tour of hair fads and fashions. Children will discover the origin of the pigtail, why the ancient Greeks shaved their beards, the cultural significance of English barristers' wigs, and much more. Smith's lively, colorful gouache art provides apt, often witty, accompaniment to the generally whimsical overview. A catchall section, "Hairy Information," includes hair record breakers, a brief discussion of the process of hair growth, and some sources for further reading. An entertaining, informative picture book that shows the length to which people--and their hairstyles--can go. Shelle Rosenfeld
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Holiday House
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0823415228
• ISBN 13: 9780823415229
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Smith Cat Bowman
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32