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From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)

Powerful visual design and skillfuly understated text combine to introduce young readers to Eleanor Roosevelt before she became one of the most influential women of the 20th century. In paintings that brilliantly echo the emotional tenor of the story while capturing a sense of the time and place in which she lived and the economically privileged class to which she belonged, Eleanor is pictured as a small, almost incidental figure in many of the illustrations. It is the way she felt while growing up, but when she leaves her family and America to attend boarding school in England at the age of 15, Eleanor begins a transformation. Under the guidance of her headmistress and mentor, Mademoiselle Souvestre, and in the loving, supportive, challenging atmosphere that her school, Allenwood, provides, she gains assuredness and self-esteem. "Mlle. Souvestre had opened the world to Eleanor." And Eleanor had opened herself to the world, as Cooney's paintings reflect, carrying herself with dignity into whatever the future would bring. (Ages 7-10)

CCBC Choices 1996 © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 1996. Used with permission.

From Publisher's Weekly

Starred review from September 2, 1996
The privileged though painful childhood of First Lady and humanitarian Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) is chronicled with tenderness and care in Caldecott Medalist Cooney's (Emily; The Ox-Cart Man) memorable picture book biography. Skillfully compressing a bounty of detail, the author/artist focuses on Eleanor's emotional life as a childhood "ugly duckling": "From the beginning the baby was a disappointment to her mother," Cooney begins. The tale ends with Eleanor's years at Allenswood, the English boarding school whose gifted headmistress helped transform Eleanor into a confident young woman. Cooney wisely refrains from specifically naming the Roosevelt family, allowing children to experience the text as an entertaining story as well as a piece of history. Creamy, reverently rendered paintings portray fashionable Manhattan, Hudson River Valley and Long Island settings; Cooney's intricate reproductions of houses and her recreations of period clothing and interiors are pleasures to behold as well as visual history lessons. An afterword sheds light on Eleanor Roosevelt's career (but would have benefited from the inclusion of her birth, marriage and death dates); most readers will probably want to explore more fully the groundbreaking achievements outlined here. Ages 5-up.