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BIOGRAPHIES
Moss, Marissa

Boardwalk Babies

40 pp. | Creston | March, 2021 | Trade ISBN 978-1-939547-66-8 $18.99
(2) K-3 Illustrated by April Chu. We open on a carnival barker ushering turn-of-the-twentieth-century crowds into a room whose walls are lined with metal and glass boxes. A farmer pulls a tiny baby out of a hatbox and asks for help saving his newborn child. In a remarkable true story, Moss introduces Dr. Martin Couney, a doctor with a flair for showmanship who used expositions and eventually the Coney Island Boardwalk to build public trust for a new idea that could save "doomed to die" premature babies: "warming boxes," or incubators. Moss's text depicts a deeply empathetic man who uses his flair for the dramatic to give babies from all kinds of backgrounds a fighting chance, and who eventually uses the skills he learned to care for his own premature infant. Chu's illustrations, sketched in muted browns and greens with an occasional carnival pop of color, have an old-timey charm full of detailed period dress and very appealing itty-bitty babies. (Unfortunately, the endpapers show sideshow performers without any context, treating them as something to gawk at in the same way these sideshow circuses did.) An author's note offers additional information about Dr. Couney and a list of suggested readings.
Reviewer: Laura Koenig | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 2021

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