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LOPEZ LOMONG

WE'RE ALL DESTINED TO USE OUR TALENT TO CHANGE PEOPLE'S LIVES

From the What Really Matters series

It’s inspiring, but it presents Lomong more as an object lesson than as a living person.

The story of a Sudanese “Lost Boy” who pursued and achieved his dream of running in the Olympics.

Seized at age 6 from his village by “rebel soldiers,” Lopepe (a nickname in his native Buya later altered to “Lopez”) escapes with other captives and runs for days to reach the U.N. refugee camp of Kakuma in Kenya. One day he joins a group of children watching the 2000 Olympics on a farmer’s battery-powered TV, and the sight of runner Michael Johnson fires up his ambition to become an Olympian himself. His adoption by a white New York couple and his recruitment by the trainer of a local high school’s cross-country team sends him on his way—to, ultimately, not only the 2008 (and, unacknowledged here, 2012) Games, but a joyful reunion with his biological parents, college, and a foundation dedicated to relief work in South Sudan. Except for name-dropping (notably a reference to “Brittany, the love of his life,” who gets no further mention) Eulate’s account is sketchy, particularly after Lomong’s arrival in the U.S., and thickly sentimental: he last appears figuratively receiving “the medal life gives you when you fulfill your dreams.” Uyá’s illustrations are likewise spare of detail, with stylized, folk-art–like human figures stiffly posed against near-featureless backgrounds.

It’s inspiring, but it presents Lomong more as an object lesson than as a living person. (Picture book/biography. 8-10)

Pub Date: May 16, 2017

ISBN: 978-84-16733-15-6

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Cuento de Luz

Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017

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WOODY GUTHRIE

POET OF THE PEOPLE

A powerful, lyrical tribute to the musician whose music is so much a part of our lives.

This moving biography honors the life and work of the legendary folk singer who celebrated the lives of working people all over the US. 

Guthrie, born in Oklahoma in 1912, came from a poor family filled with music, but devastated by death and illness. As a youngster, he absorbed the sounds of country living and the traditional music of Oklahoma and Texas. Later, during the Great Depression, he used these memories to become a popular voice for the dust bowl refugees, writing and singing about them and performing on radio in Los Angeles. He spent years moving from place to place in support of the union movement, migrant field workers, and coal miners. Christensen (Moon Over Tennessee, 1999, etc.) writes briefly of his marriages, his children, and his eventual tragic death from Huntington’s disease, but the thrust is his devotion to the cause of downtrodden workers. The words of his signature song “This Land is Your Land” run along the top of each page and are printed in their entirety at the end along with a timeline and Web site citation. (No bibliography or source notes are included.) Christensen’s text is strong and beautiful, as rich in images as her subject’s music. Through them, the reader will get a wonderful sense of the soul of her subject and his times. Read aloud, this could work for younger readers, but the dramatic mixed media, woodcut-like illustrations in a picture-book format will attract older ones as well.

A powerful, lyrical tribute to the musician whose music is so much a part of our lives. ((Biography. 8-10))

Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2001

ISBN: 0-375-81113-3

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2001

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THE FABULOUS FLYING MACHINES OF ALBERTO SANTOS-DUMONT

An immensely popular figure in his day, the Brazilian-born Alberto Santos-Dumont invented a personal dirigible that he...

So the Wright Brothers were the first to fly? Au contraire, asserts Griffith in this rare portrait of a little-known (in this country, at least) early aviator.

An immensely popular figure in his day, the Brazilian-born Alberto Santos-Dumont invented a personal dirigible that he steered around the Eiffel Tower and drove out to run errands. Griffith’s prose isn’t always polished (“If Blériot succeeded to fly first….”), but her narrative makes her subject’s stature clear as she takes him from a luncheon with jeweler Louis Cartier, who invented the wristwatch to help his friend keep track of his time in the air, to his crowning aeronautical achievement in 1906: He beat out both the secretive Wrights and pushy rival Louis Blériot as the first to fly an aircraft that could take off and land on its own power. The author covers his career in more detail in a closing note (with photos), ascribing his eventual suicide in part to remorse that, instead of ushering in an era of peace as he had predicted, aircraft were being used in warfare. Montanari’s genteel pastel-and-chalk pictures of turn-of-the-20th-century Paris and Parisians don’t capture how much larger than life Santos-Dumont was, but they do succeed in helping Griffith bring him to American audiences.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011

ISBN: 978-1-4197-0011-8

Page Count: -

Publisher: Abrams

Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011

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