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The Snow Baby: The Arctic Childhood of Admiral Robert E. Peary's Daring Daughter by Katherine Kirkpatrick. Holiday House. $16.95.

There are topics in this world that lend themselves to children’s non-fiction. Some of these topics are the usual cast of characters. The Titanic. Roanoke. The Molasses Flood of 1919. Other topics are a little less well-known but when you hear of them your jaw drops and you sputter something along the lines of, "How did no one think to write this book until now?" I would say that Katherine Kirkpatrick’s, “The Snow Baby” falls squarely into the latter category. Quick and fun, factual and fast-paced, the story of Admiral Peary’s daughter and her years in the frozen north makes for ideal non-fiction reading for kids.

She was born in the far north of Greenland in 1893 in a part of the world where the sun wasn’t to appear again for months. The daughter of the American Arctic explorer Lieutenant Robert E. Peary and his wife Josephine, Marie Ahnighito Peary spent her early years bouncing about the frozen north. Her father was determined to become the first man to reach the North Pole, and once in a while his family joined him part of the way on his expeditions. Marie’s life consisted of Inuit friends, snow as far as the eye can see, and small adventures on the ice. Author Katherine Kirkpatrick traces Marie’s numerous journeys between America and the Arctic, while also charting her father’s dream and the lives of everyone she touched.

Kirkpatrick cleverly limits the length of the story to a mere 50 pages or so. In doing so it’s as interesting to take note of what she does mention as what she doesn’t. For example, Matthew Henson was Peary’s personal aide in the Arctic. He was also an African-American and a true hero in his own right. And Kirkpatrick does eventually sort of mention to this fact by and by, but her focus is squarely on Marie. Mr. Henson’s skin color comes out in degrees more than anything else. She also is exceedingly careful with her facts. At no point does Kirkpatrick ever force her own opinion onto the reader. With an impartiality verging on the distanced, we learn of the two Inuit children Peary fathered when his wife was not around. We hear about how he took three meteorites the Inuits used for making knives and spear points with a quiet, “Peary saw no reason why he shouldn’t take the meteorites from Greenland. According to him, the Inuit no longer needed the iron meteorites because they could now trade for metal knife blades.” Be that as it may, as we read towards the end of the book the Inuit were “left without the trade goods they’d grown accustomed to,” after Peary’s departed in 1909. Kirkpatrick is sly. She is certainly allowing the child reader the chance to reach their own conclusions on these subjects without seemingly putting forth her own. Just the same, when she recounts how Peary hired Matthew Henson for his lectures, Kirkpatrick points out that Matt was hired, “to wear (and perspire in) thick furs.” True enough. You can give facts that damn a man without having actually write, “What an awful guy!,” on the page. This distance is necessary when discussing the Inuit too. We hear about how Marie’s friend Billy Bah was married at fourteen. Later we see a cheery twelve-year-old with her own baby. Some authors would condemn this practice. Others might try to explain it. Kirkpatrick, however, lays the facts before you and then takes a step back. However you choose to digest this information is up to you and you alone.

One of the first things that really struck me about this book was the number of photographs found here. I count at least sixty-three photographs in this book. Of these, a stunning twenty-eight are of Marie herself. Additionally, each page contains at least one photo, usually with more than one breaking up the text. Considering the time period with which we are dealing (late 19th/early 20th century) the fact that there even were this many photographs taken is impressive in and of itself. And that so many of them were taken of a single girl is just children’s book gold. Kirkpatrick does a remarkable job of showing you images of many of the characters mentioned in the book too. The sole exception, I guess, would have to be Marie’s childhood companion Koodlooktoo who only appears as a very small infant at the beginning of the book. And you can hardly blame the author for not being able to produce his face out of thin air.

And did I mention how exciting it was? One minute Marie’s sliding down a hill and the next thing you know she’s about to skim right over a cliff into the frozen waters below unless Koodlooktoo is able to save her. Ships are constantly getting iced in and trapped. People have to eat dogs. The book’s wild and the fact that it’s so well researched and cited just aids to the pleasure of reading it. Kirkpatrick is careful to include a Bibliography of First and Secondary Sources, a list of Source Notes, an Index, and a long listing of Picture Credits for anyone curious as to where she found all these great shots. Proper credit is given in the text itself to Ms. Peary’s own book, “The Snowbaby’s Own Story,” though I would hazard a guess that this book is the more honest of the two. Something tells me that Marie probably wouldn’t have mentioned her illegitimate half-brothers and sisters when discussing her much beloved (and absent) father.

If I were placed in charge of marketing this book, you know the first thing I would have mentioned in the bookflap/press releases/what-have-you would be the fact that its subject (deep breath), Marie Ahnighito Peary Stafford Kuhne, was a children’s author in her own right. You may have stumbled on her Little Tooktoo stories at some point in your travels. In any case, with its short length and young subject, “The Snow Baby” might pair very well with other non-fiction titles like, “The Cat With the Yellow Star” by Susan Goldman Rubin. And for those people wishing to do a unit on polar exploration, you might want to consider also taking a look at, “Onward: A Photobiography of African-American Polar Explorer Matthew Henson,” by Delores Johnson. All in all, consider this a really spectacular non-fiction choice for any given year. A non-fiction read that comes across as a true pleasure.

Notes on the Cover: Well, it looks cool. And an adorable tiny child wrapped in furs is hard to beat. Just the same, there’s a picture of Marie, one of the very first in the book, where she’s seven and wearing warm Inuit clothing. One foot is placed in front of the other, and she looks (not to put too fine a point on it) like a badass. I did seriously appreciate that the images of snowflakes that appear on the cover are from W.A. Bentley. Remember the Caldecott Award winning picture book “Snowflake Bentley” by Jacqueline Briggs Martin? That guy’s photographs are nicely reproduced here as blue on white rather than white on black. It’s very nicely done. And, to be honest, adorable babies wrapped in fur are going to sell a lot more books to parents, teachers, and librarians than badass seven-year-olds who look like they could take down a walrus if you asked them to.

Note: Do not be led astray by the incorrect publication date given by Amazon.com. According to WorldCat and the book’s very publication page, this title came out in 2007 rather than November of 2006. You are safe in including it in your 2007 best book lists (hint hint) as it officially came out in January.

Author’s Note from Her Website:

"While I was working on The Snow Baby, I greatly enjoyed touring the Peary family’s home on Eagle Island. To view some of my photographs from that trip, click on Eagle Island Scrapbook. To plan your own visit to the house, see Peary’s Eagle Island. And to learn more about Robert E. Peary, please visit the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum.

Researchers interested in the published writings and personal papers of Marie Stafford Peary Kuhne and Josephine Diebitsch Peary, may view them by appointment at the Maine Women Writers Collection."

Nothing but Trouble: The Story of Althea Gibson by Sue Stauffacher, illustrated by Greg Couch. Knopf Books for Young Readers (a Random House imprint). $16.99.

I’m not ashamed to say it. Say the name “Althea Gibson” to me a month ago and you’d have met a blank stare. Say it to me now, however, and you may suffer the indignity of finding me thrusting Sue Stauffacher’s newest picture book, “Nothing but Trouble: The Story of Althea Gibson,” into your arms while screaming into your ears its high points. This might be so bad either if the book only had a high-point here or there, but the fact of the matter is that “Althea Gibson” is ALL high points. It’s a rip-roaring, snorting, fast and frenzied, well-researched, reiterated, illustrated, formulated bit of picture book biography magnificence. With the author of the “Donuthead” books on the one hand and soon-to-be-recognized-for-his-magnificence artist Greg Couch filling in the necessary art, “Althea Gibson” has everything you could possibly want going for it. It’s fun. It’s funny. It’s smart and interesting, and has a flawed heroine you can’t help but want to know more about. If your young child is looking for a biography of a woman and you don’t know where to turn, I can’t think of a better book available to you. There’s something about Althea.

Ask anyone. Ask her mama her daddy her teacher or the cop down the street that busted her for petty theft. They’ll all tell you the same: That Althea Gibson is nothing but trouble. More comfortable tearing up the playground in the 1930s than sitting at a desk in school, Althea has a reputation for recklessness. None of that is enough to scare off play leader Buddy Walker, however. When he sees Althea play sports, he can only see raw talent and untapped potential. With his guidance and the help of the Sugar Hill’s ritzy tennis court “The Cosmopolitan”, Althea is given the chance to improve her style. Problem is, she has a hard time with being polite, following the rules, and not punching out her fellow players’ lights. It takes time and patience and self-control to make Althea the best she can possibly be, but by 1957 she becomes the first African-American to win at Wimbledon. And though she could hog all the credit for herself, Ms. Gibson gives full credit to that amazing Buddy Walker who had the smarts to become her mentor.

It’s always more interesting to read about a flawed hero. Perfect people do not a fascinating story make. Maybe that’s why the trend in children’s biographies lately has been to tell the tale of those men and women who weren’t made of solid gold from birth onwards. Between Kathleen Krull’s, “Isaac Newton”, Laura Amy Schlitz’s, “The Hero Schliemann,” and now Stauffacher’s, “Nothing but Trouble,” biographies for kids are getting better and better with every coming year. The nice thing about Althea is that for all her pouts and ill-manners, she's shown here to be someone who could conquer the world if she just applied a little self-control. As Buddy tells her at one point, “You’ve got to decide, Althea. Are you going to play your game, or are you going to let the game play you? When I go to the jazz club, I play like a tiger, but I wear a tuxedo.” Stauffacher draws much of her dialogue out of Althea’s biographies “I Always Wanted to Be Somebody” and “So Much to Life For.” Even without such lines, however, the author knows how to put a good story together. This plot is carefully crafted. From the timeline in the back (written on tennis balls, no less) to the great opening line, (“Althea Gibson was the tallest, wildest tomboy in the history of Harlem”) to the thin slices of her life, Stauffacher does a stand up job. As Althea’s biographer she prefers to concentrate on the role of Buddy Walker, even mentioning in her Author’s Note that “Though this is Althea’s story it is also Buddy Walker’s story.” The result is that this tale comes off as a tribute to mentors everywhere. To those people that see potential in certain kids and do what they can to bring such potential to light. And that is the nature of an entirely different kind of hero.

Flying just below the radar is illustrator Greg Couch. Ms. Stauffacher may have the wherewithal, wit, and smarts to think to bring Althea’s life to the page, but it is Mr. Couch’s illustrations that truly deserve attention here. Couch has taken a story that could have been accompanied by staid, simple drawings and instead imbued them with a kind of electricity. Althea doesn’t just leap off the page here. She crackles and snaps with an energy you don’t usually encounter on your average picture book bio. Couch has chosen to clothe Althea in a hyperactive rainbow that zigs and zags with the girl’s every movement and leap. Parents and teachers presenting this book to kids can ask them what they think this rainbow really means. And hopefully they’ll notice that when Buddy plays the saxophone (as he did in his own jazz band) the same rainbow colors come out of the instrument. Plus the fact that these rainbows are the sole spot of color against a sepia-tinged background of old photos and scenes from the 30s, 40s and 50s is a nice touch as well. And when, at last, you see Althea win her Wimbledon, she is surrounded at her acceptance speech by a rainbow that has aged and changed from pure primary colors to subtler hues. I also appreciate that there is nothing anachronistic going on in this book. Every picture feels like it has stepped out of history.

A co-worker of mine felt somewhat disappointed that the book ends as suddenly as it does. One minute Althea is learning the benefits of playing by the rules (while maintaining her fire) and the next she’s won Wimbledon and the story's over. I think this is less a flaw of this specific book than of the picture book biography format in general. You can’t linger on a year here or there, however much you might want to. And honestly, this is a book worth discovering. Stauffacher and Couch have found something to say about Althea that hasn’t yet been said in the realm of children’s literature and their passion in bringing Althea’s passion to life is worth taking note of. So stand back now. I’m going to say something and I’m going to say it loud. This book not only pairs well with “Wilma Unlimited” by Kathleen Krull, it may have supplanted it in my brain as my new favorite picture book sports biography. A must read pick.

On shelves August 14th.

First Lines: “Althea Gibson was the tallest, wildest tomboy in the history of Harlem.”

Extra: An artist in the professional sense, Mr. Couch has more than a few paintings to his name. So we’re just going to present, without comment, his Giving Trees. It appeared in the “experimental poetry” journal Sidereality.

The Strongest Man In the World: Louis Cyr by Nicolas Debon. Groundwood Press. $17.95

Okay people. Fess up. If a teacher tells all the kids in her class that they are now doing projects on famous Canadians and that everyone has to come back with at least one great Canadian hero, what biography would you hand them? Hm? Yeah, see, that’s what I thought. You can’t think of any great biographies of Canadian heroes off the top of your head (and no, Paul Bunyan doesn’t count). The fact of the matter is that Americans know so very little about their neighbor to the North that they hardly ever fret such matters. And truth be told, your child may never be given this assignment. But what if they were? And what if you knew of this super-cool graphic novel style picture book biography about (not to put too fine a point on it), “The Strongest Man In the World”? How cool would that make you? Well sit back and relax, puffins, cause here I hand to you a gem of a book. Chronicling the life of Louis Cyr and written by Canadian/Frenchman Nicolas Debon, this is not your average tale of strength and daring-do. It has heart. It has soul. It has facts. What more could a person wish for then?

Emiliana is worried about her father, and she has every right to be. It's the early 20th century and he has just been told by the doctor that he must retire from public life. And maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, but her papa’s not just any man. He’s Louis Cyr, a strongman of great fame and fortune. Owner and creator of the Louis Cyr Circus, Emiliana’s father reminisces with his daughter over his long and remarkable life. Readers see his early days, when he was coached by a grandfather convinced that his grandson would be strong since, “In this tough world of ours, a man without strength is nothing.” Then at seventeen he lifted an imported French drayhorse in a contest and his life’s work began. Debon sketches out Cyr’s years, taking into account various challenges and meaningful moments in his life. We see food contests, a brief stint as a policeman, and finally the European tour that allowed him to follow his dream to start a circus of his own. In the end he must quit the circus life, but as Louis himself says as he leaves, “I’ve been called the strongest man in the world, and one day somebody else will be even stronger… But maybe the strongest of all is the man who knows how to leave what he has loved with no regret.” An Afterword contains photographs and facts on the real Louis Cyr and there is a section of Further Information that includes books for supplemental reading.

Debon cleverly uses the character of Emiliana to bring up various rumors associated with Cyr’s life that are deftly put down from time to time. I suspect that in Canada such rumors would be better known than here in the states, but it’s fun to hear them just the same. Did he really carry off six bandits to jail all at once? No, probably more like one or two. Did he lift a horse when he was just a kid? Not at all. He was seventeen at the time. I was much impressed with the writing in this book, alongside Debon’s sense of storytelling. Essentially, what we have here is one great big flashback. But rather than feeling stilted or herky-jerky, the text flows from Cyr’s memories of the life he has led. Coming to the conclusion, you get a real sense that this man did exactly what he set out to accomplish. I couldn't help but hope for a Timeline in the back, of course. The Afterword really only touches on some of the aspects of Cyr’s life. We don’t know why he died or what of. I did find the photographs of him very interesting, as well as the mention that “Remarkably, despite dramatic improvements in strength training and lifting techniques, some of his records remain unequalled to this day.” Still, it would have been nice to hear which records those were.

Imagine a French Raymond Briggs and you get a sense of what Debon’s style resembles. The illustrations here are painted with thick earth-tones. Lots of browns, peaches, and blues are at work. The endpapers of this book display multiple acts that would have performed with Cyr during the height of his circus days. I was particularly taken with John Callahan, described as, “the funniest Clown in the Universe”, though he looks anything but. The graphic novel style works within the story Debon is trying to tell. At first I was suspicious of the format, fearing that Debon would rely too heavily on the style rather than the substance of his subject. However, the visual style works within the context of Cyr’s tale. If Louis Cyr was larger than life then it only seems fair that a picture book biography should find a technique that conveys all the drama and action of his life from start to finish.

I do wish that a little more time and attention could have been given over to Debon’s sources, to say nothing of the inclusion of a Timeline. Still, as new biographies go, “The Strongest Man In the World”, certainly does its darndest to pack a wallop. Infinitely readable and engaging, it’ll have kids all the more interested to learn about early 20th century circus life, and the feats of one man in particular. An engaging, unique little creation.