![]() Vibrant, stylized illustrations portray the energy and effervescence of Josephine’s bright, comic stage presence.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.”.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. 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. Josephine’s early difficulties make her relatable.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. ![]() ![]() ![]() An engaging introduction to Josephine Baker, an African American dancer who defied racial discrimination to become a global phenomenon in the 1920s and ’30s. ![]()
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