Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker

This incomparable biography conveys dancer Josephine Baker's passion, exuberance, dignity, and eccentricity through words and pictures that nearly jump off the page. Powell doesn't shy away from the challenges (including racism) Baker faced but emphasizes that Baker never let them overwhelm her joy from performing. Robinson's highly stylized, boldly colored illustrations are at once sophisticated and inviting to young readers. Reading list.

An engaging introduction to Josephine Baker, an African American dancer who defied racial discrimination to become a global phenomenon in the 1920s and ’30s. 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. Josephine’s early difficulties make her relatable. 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. . . . 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. 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.” Vibrant, stylized illustrations portray the energy and effervescence of Josephine’s bright, comic stage presence. The book is appealingly designed to mimic a play, making it seem as though readers are experiencing one of Josephine’s legendary performances. 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’s closing spread, the curtain again down, shows flowers strewn across the stage. Affecting quotes from Josephine Baker are scattered throughout the text: “I improvised, crazed with the music. Even my teeth and eyes burned with fever. I leapt to touch the sky. When I regained earth it was mine alone.”

To describe Josephine Baker's life as "dazzling" is not an exaggeration. In this incomparable biography both Powell and Robinson convey the passion, exuberance, dignity, and eccentricity of their subject through words and pictures that nearly jump off the page. There is a surprise at every turn as we learn how Baker, at fifteen, hid inside a costume trunk to stow away with a dance troupe. We see how she managed to stand out in a chorus line by crossing her eyes and acting goofy to win over audiences. We find her walking down the Champs-Elysees with her pet leopard, Chiquita, who wore a diamond choker. You think her life couldn't get any more interesting? Wait until you hear about her years as a spy for the French Resistance. Or about the twelve children she adopted from all over the world (her "rainbow tribe"), to prove that people of different races could live together. Matter-of-factly introducing the racism her subject encountered throughout her life, Powell doesn't shy away from the challenges Baker faced, but she makes clear that Baker never let them overwhelm the joy she got from performing and living life to its fullest. Robinson's highly stylized illustrations, using bold colors and a flat perspective, are at once sophisticated and inviting to young readers. Even the few pages without pictures are made visually interesting by the broad strokes of acrylic paint in the background and by the clean typeface that judiciously uses uppercase to accentuate important words or lines in the text. Direct quotes from Baker -- translated from the French, of course -- are interspersed throughout. C'est magnifique! kathleen t. horning