Cover illustration See permission.	The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
	The Big Picture, a regular Bulletin feature both on-line and off, is an in-depth look at selected new titles and trends. See the archive for selections from previous months.

January 15th. King's Birthday. School's off--an honor only conferred upon the memory of our country's most distinguished movers, shakers, and shapers. While middle- and high-schoolers can appreciate Dr. King's groundbreaking strategies and accomplishments, primary graders are likely to conflate his national holiday with Veterans' Day, Labor Day, Presidents' Day--days that seem to invoke adult solemnity but overlook kid-pleasing rituals involving food and gifts. Unlocking for action-hungry youngsters the significance of a life based on peace, fortitude, and self-control is an undeniable challenge, but Rappaport and Collier have found the key, and it's "big."

"Big" is one of the earliest deposits in a child's word bank. It's infused with awe. It's what adults are and kids want to be. It's everything kids sense to be important, but it's difficult or impossible to articulate. It's a blessedly easy word to read. Rappaport uses the concept to forge an empathic connection between King and her audience, introducing him as a little guy who grasped the power of the hymns, Bible readings, and preaching of his minister father and predicted with fumbling and startling insight, "When I grow up, I'm going to get big words, too." Throughout this title everything about King's words is, figuratively and literally, big. Each spare box of text offers a few lines of biographical detail or historical background, simply and cogently stated for very young listeners, and concludes with an impassioned King quote dominating the page in oversized type: "White ministers told [the marchers] to stop. Mayors and governors and police chiefs and judges ordered them to stop. . . .'Wait! For years I have heard the word "Wait!" We have waited more than three hundred and forty years for our rights'"; "Some black Americans wanted to fight back with their fists. Martin convinced them not to. . . . 'Love is the key to the problems of the world.'"

With King's words looming larger than life, Collier supplies the concrete visual imagery to connect potent ideas with an unintimidating, flesh-and-blood man. A life-sized portrait of King, wide-mouthed and crinkly-eyed in a hearty laugh, greets children from the wordless cover. Warm-toned, symbol-rich collage (Collier discusses several of his visual metaphors in an opening note) portrays King in a range of emotions--a little boy tense with resentment upon discovering a "Whites Only" drinking fountain, a gentle minister leaning intimately over the pulpit toward his congregation, a mournful victim kneeling before the flames of his burning home, a thundering orator with an outstretched arm signifying the breadth of his famous "dream." Recurring images of United States flags and stained-glass windows convey, perhaps more succinctly than words, the political and spiritual energies that powered King's life.

A child-oriented bibliography of books and websites, source notes for quotations, and a list of important dates in King's life hint that even the very young might be required to approach Dr. King as a research subject. This title fairly demands to be read aloud, though, as a bravura solo performance, in tandem voices for narrative and quotations, or perhaps even in chorus. This is powerful stuff, big stuff, and children privileged to share Martin's Big Words with classmates or family will begin to understand that January 15th isn't just another day off.

--Elizabeth Bush, Reviewer

Cover illustration by Bryan Collier from Martin's Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. © 2001. Used by permission of Jump at the Sun/Hyperion Books for Children.

http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/puboff/bccb/0102big.html