America the Beautiful

August 2, 1993
A Wellesley professor's trip to Pikes Peak in 1893 inspired the now-famous verse extolling the American landscape; Waldman ( Light ; Bring Back the Deer ) writes that his own travels west instilled in him an awe of ``beauty beyond the realm of imagination.'' Using Bates's verse as his text, Waldman paints scene after scene, matching every phrase to a specific locale (these are identified in a well-designed key at the end). He pays homage to the ``spacious skies'' (above the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee), the ``purple mountain majesties'' (the Grand Tetons) and the ``fruited plains'' (the Napa Valley). Impressively and imaginatively, he conveys his wonder at natural beauty by stylizing his art: he renders each vista in thick, impressionistic strokes from a predominantly violet palette, choosing his colors as if from a paradigmatic sunset. Beautiful indeed. All ages.

June 27, 2005
"Minor creates a breathtaking visual journey to some of the country's diverse landscapes and monuments, explored in Bates's famous 1895 poem," said PW
. All ages.

April 1, 2020
A pictorial interpretation of Bates' "America the Beautiful." Few will question the aesthetic beauty of Minor's paintings, which employ breathtaking realism to depict a diversity of landscapes in the continental U.S. Minor chooses sites ranging from the "purple mountain majesty" of Grand Teton National Park (first appearing on the front jacket) to a moving illustration for the line "Thine alabaster cities gleam / Undimmed by human tears!" that shows the Empire State Building illuminated in red, white, and blue with twin columns of light in the background. Throughout, Minor also varies his settings between the contemporary era and the past, selectively including people in some art. Unfortunately, herein lies a romanticizing of American history that is reliant on exclusion and erasure. The cover image of the Tetons is reused on the recto of an interior spread and expanded to a facing verso depicting three lone tepees, smoke rising from their tops. Such imagery risks relegating Indigenous people to the past and reinforces the myth of historically sparse Native populations--especially when juxtaposed with a scene of "pilgrim[s]" at Plimouth Plantation and another with a covered wagon moving through Nebraska. A spread with the figures on Mount Rushmore exalted as "heroes... / Who more than self their country loved / And mercy more than life" further whitewashes America's history of settler colonialism and slavery. Both beautiful and deeply flawed, like its subject. (biographical notes, sheet music, key, map) (Picture book. 4-10)

COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.