Justice Ketanji

June 1, 2023
A celebration of the U.S. Supreme Court's newest associate justice and first ever Black woman. As befitting a tribute to a potential role model who has only recently become a national figure (though Ketanji Brown Jackson's legal career began in 1996), the focus here is less on her specific achievements and decisions than early influences--particularly her father (" 'You can do anything. You can be anything, ' he told his bright-eyed brown daughter")--and insights into her character as she went from high school class president to U.S. district judge on the way to taking a seat on our highest court. With reasonable fidelity, Holt's stiffly composed group scenes compress major personal events in her life and depict her facing a jury and then later senatorial grilling with equal calmness, once with knitting in her lap and again with her family and supportive "sister-friends" sitting behind her, before closing with a final, formal close-up of a confident Jackson smiling widely. If the relatively massive dump of online news stories listed in the bibliography at the end won't be much use to younger readers, it should serve older ones curious about the details of her background and legal record. (This book was reviewed digitally.) A glowing portrait of a groundbreaking jurist, or at least her public persona. (Picture-book biography. 7-9)

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July 10, 2023
A father’s words—“You can do anything. You can be anything”—frame this stirring picture book biography of Ketanji Brown Jackson (b. 1970), the first Black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Initially focusing on Jackson as the four-year-old daughter of a law student father, Patrick describes how words soon became part of her own life: “She loved reading them. She loved writing them. Most of all, she loved speaking them.” In jewel-tone illustrations with wash-like backgrounds, Holt depicts Jackson’s successes on her high school debate team, at Harvard University, and throughout her career—including responding with “calmness and grace” during her Supreme Court confirmation hearing. Referencing the women “who made her feel strong,” this accessible telling roots itself in resonant affirmations. A bibliography concludes. Ages 4–8.