DARWIN
By Alice B. McGinty
Illustrated by Mary Azarian
Houghton Mifflin, 2009
Category: Picture Book Biography
There is nothing quite so satisfying to me as a good picture book biography. I adore a quick glimpse into a life, and I admire the restraint and good sense that are necessary to give this glimpse just the right depth and scope. It is hard, I think, to get it all just right in this format. Goodness knows I speak from experience here; I’ve been working to get one particular picture book biography just right for, oh, about four years now. Not. Easy. Alice McGinty and Mary Azarian, however, know the secret; they got DARWIN just right.
I was tempted to be discouraged, actually, by the fact that this beautiful book is out in the world and my own picture book biography–similar in so many ways–is still sitting on my hard drive. Alas, there was Charles, on the very last page of the book, sharing this wisdom:
Whenever I have found out that I have blundered, or that my work has been imperfect, and when I have been contemptuously criticized, and even when I have been overpraised, so that I have felt mortified, it has been my greatest comfort to say hundreds of times to myself … I have worked as hard and as well as I could, and no man can do more than this.
No woman either.
Happy Monday!