Text and illustrations work in tandem to accurately document Josephine’s extraordinary life and the era in which she lived. Louis to the dazzling stages of Paris all the way to Carnegie Hall. In a few short and well-organized parts, readers learn the story of one of the world’s most well known female performers who danced and sang her way from the poor and segregated streets of St. Robinson’s paintings are as colorful and rich as Josephine Baker’s story, offering page after page of captivating and animated illustrations and rhythmic text, which is written in blank verse. This charming biography invites readers to step inside the vibrant and spirited world of performer and civil rights advocate, Josephine Baker. When I regained earth it was mine alone.” Even my teeth and eyes burned with fever. Affecting quotes from Josephine Baker are scattered throughout the text: “I improvised, crazed with the music.The book’s closing spread, the curtain again down, shows flowers strewn across the stage. The first spread depicts a closed curtain, which several pages later opens to reveal a stage and the title, “The Beginning/ 1906–1917.” Five more acts follow, dividing Josephine’s life into significant periods. The book is appealingly designed to mimic a play, making it seem as though readers are experiencing one of Josephine’s legendary performances.Vibrant, stylized illustrations portray the energy and effervescence of Josephine’s bright, comic stage presence.Patricia Hruby Powell’s text captures the jazzy language of the era and Josephine’s flare: “Knees SQUEEZE, now FLY / heels flap and chop / arms scissor and splay / eyes swivel and pop.”.I danced to keep warm.” And before she became a success in France, she was considered too young, too thin, too small, and too comical to be a dancer in America. As a child, she and her family “moved through / the slums of Saint Louie, / like a band of VAGABONDS, / from shack to shack.” Josephine says, “I didn’t have any stockings. Josephine’s early difficulties make her relatable.
The book celebrates not only Josephine’s incendiary rise to fame but also the barriers she broke along the way, from being the first (and only) black star in the Ziegfeld Follies to later adopting twelve multicultural children she called her Rainbow Tribe. An engaging introduction to Josephine Baker, an African American dancer who defied racial discrimination to become a global phenomenon in the 1920s and ’30s.
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