Keep Your Eye on the Kid: The Early Years of Buster Keaton
In this vivid account of Buster Keaton’s early years, he calls himself a “backstage baby,” performing in his parents’ vaudeville act from childhood. Despite his father’s disapproval, Keaton fell in love with movies and later learned the film business at a friend’s studio. The story ends with Keaton in charge of his own studio. Written in first person, the text consists of a few simple, conversational lines per page. In the author’s note, Brighton mentions the difficulty of separating fact from fiction since Keaton was noted for telling good stories, including the anecdote (illustrated in the book) in which a tornado sucks the boy out the window and sets him down, unharmed, on Main Street. With cartoon-style panel layouts, clean line drawings, and washes in muted colors, aspects of the enticing illustrations are reminiscent of art Keaton could have seen as a child in Little Nemo comic strips and the picture books of Maurice Boutet de Monvel. The bibliography and filmography are too short, but this is a fitting tribute to a movie legend. Grades 3-5. --Carolyn Phelan