Molly Bannaky

Alice McGill

The first thing to be said about Molly Bannaky is that the illustrations, by Chris Sontpiet, are some of the finest you will ever see in a kids' book. They make this book worth the price of admission, and your children, if they're into the pretty pictures thing, will probably treasure them long into adulthood.

It's too bad the prose doesn't fit the illustrations. Molly Bannaky, the story of the grandmother of scientist Benjamin Banneker, is rushed, uneven, and contains gaps large enough for the author's entire credibility to fall through. I've mentioned kids' innate crap detectors a number of times in my reviews of kids' books; some of the transitions here (do authors really still use the word "suddenly"?) are bound to set them off.

But you've still got the pictures.