Karate Hour - Hardcover

Author Carol Nevius is a social studies and language arts teacher. She was inspired to write KARATE HOUR, her first children’s book, when her youngest child started taking karate lessons. She lives in Coral Springs, Florida.

Illustrator Bill Thomson is an Assistant Professor of Illustration at the University of Hartford. His startlingly realistic and dynamic artwork brings the KARATE HOUR to life, and has been selected for inclusion in the presticious Society of Illustrator's ORIGINAL ART show and has won critical acclaim. Bill Thomson lives in Southington, Connecticut.

*Starred Review* Gr. 1-4. The world of the karate class comes into up-close focus in this startling, realistic picture book. Using rhymed couplets, Nevius explains what goes on in class: the children bow; the master enters, moving with strength and grace; the students do exercises, and then the energized stances and kicking begin. The text does a fine job of capturing both the precepts and the movements in relatively few words, but it's Thomson's amazing artwork that will make kids feel as though they are right with the students in the dojo. With the clarity of photographs and many in-your-face perspectives (a foot cracking through a wooden board), the pictures are reminiscent of some of Chris Van Allsburg's work. Thomson also knows how to manipulate light and dark, giving real heft to the art. Children can see the power in one boy's fist as he punches toward the page, and the multiethnic students' tumbling looks just as if the kids are really on a roll. An excellent afterword explains the history of karate and its philosophy as a defensive discipline. Ilene Cooper
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