Beyoncé: Shine Your Light, written by Sarah Warren, reviewed by Klaudia Janek

Student Reviewer: Dia C.
Summary: Through a dazzling and vibrant colors in 30 pages worth of gorgeous illustrations, Beyoncé: Shine your Light aims to inspire children to relentlessly drive torwars their passions, even in the face of decades worth of losses and setbacks. Delicately written by author Sarah Warren and soulfully illustrated by artist Geneva Bowers, Beyoncé’s decades worth of music and fame as a genre-defining R&B artist is compacted into a literary format truly befitting of a book painting the ever-present flair of the music icon Beyoncé. The book shows the idol’s ascension to fame starting from her childhood ambitions and uses her successes from a toddler to a top-charting artist with Destiny’s Child and then on her own. Words such as “grateful, independent, bright, angry, forgiving and fierce are used to describe Beyoncé. This biography ends with a reflection on a career as a pop-artist to topics that Beyoncé is working on now. Things like women’s rights, social justice, her hometown in trouble and the beauty of her people.






Straight Talk for Librarians: This book is a biography for the youngest Beyoncé fan. With positive words and images, this is a perfect introduction to Beyoncé in a picture book biography. The characters in the book are diverse to reflect all of her fans. Some of her iconic tour outfits are pictured throughout the book. There is a message of working hard and not giving up that will resonate with young readers. The bibliography at the end shows how much research went into the particular book. Readers may notice that a donation from all book sales will go to Beyoncé’s #beygood initiative. The author’s dedication at the beginning of the book is something that should be read before starting the book. “Shine Forward.” Beyoncé fans!