A welcome and timely introduction to a pioneering Brazilian conservationist.
The book opens with a stirring scene of nonviolent protest.
The year is 1988, and a group of forest peoples, led by Mendes, are singing the Brazilian national anthem as they peacefully confront ranchers attempting to raze the Amazon forest. The story then flashes back to Mendes’ formative years, describing how he grew up in the forest working alongside his father as a rubber tapper. Readers learn about the semifeudal system under which rubber tapper communities toiled, exploited by rich landowners who deliberately sought to keep workers and their families illiterate and thus disempowered. However, young Mendes received private tutoring and, as an adult, used his education to fight for tappers’ rights. When the Brazilian government opened up the Amazon to cattle ranching in an effort to stimulate the failing economy, acres of forest were destroyed. Mendes organized the tappers into a national union, which staged protests, and called for the creation of “extractive reserves” to give local communities control over the harvesting of forest products. As his name and work became known, Mendes won international acclaim. The book’s closing pages sensitively recount his untimely death by murder and summarize his lasting legacy. Ganeri’s biographical account uses a narrative nonfiction style and is interspersed with factual information about the Amazon forest. The text can be dry at times but is tempered by Carpentier’s vibrant and colorful folk art–style illustrations.
A welcome and timely introduction to a pioneering Brazilian conservationist. (facts, glossary, index) (Picture-book biography. 7-12)Pub Date: March 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-62371-856-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Crocodile/Interlink
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
For every dreaming girl (and boy) with a pencil in hand (or keyboard) and a story to share.
A multiaward–winning author recalls her childhood and the joy of becoming a writer.
Writing in free verse, Woodson starts with her 1963 birth in Ohio during the civil rights movement, when America is “a country caught / / between Black and White.” But while evoking names such as Malcolm, Martin, James, Rosa and Ruby, her story is also one of family: her father’s people in Ohio and her mother’s people in South Carolina. Moving south to live with her maternal grandmother, she is in a world of sweet peas and collards, getting her hair straightened and avoiding segregated stores with her grandmother. As the writer inside slowly grows, she listens to family stories and fills her days and evenings as a Jehovah’s Witness, activities that continue after a move to Brooklyn to reunite with her mother. The gift of a composition notebook, the experience of reading John Steptoe’s Stevieand Langston Hughes’ poetry, and seeing letters turn into words and words into thoughts all reinforce her conviction that “[W]ords are my brilliance.” Woodson cherishes her memories and shares them with a graceful lyricism; her lovingly wrought vignettes of country and city streets will linger long after the page is turned.
For every dreaming girl (and boy) with a pencil in hand (or keyboard) and a story to share. (Memoir/poetry. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-399-25251-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
With young readers diagnosed with anxiety in ever increasing numbers, this book offers a necessary mirror to many.
Young Raina is 9 when she throws up for the first time that she remembers, due to a stomach bug. Even a year later, when she is in fifth grade, she fears getting sick.
Raina begins having regular stomachaches that keep her home from school. She worries about sharing food with her friends and eating certain kinds of foods, afraid of getting sick or food poisoning. Raina’s mother enrolls her in therapy. At first Raina isn’t sure about seeing a therapist, but over time she develops healthy coping mechanisms to deal with her stress and anxiety. Her therapist helps her learn to ground herself and relax, and in turn she teaches her classmates for a school project. Amping up the green, wavy lines to evoke Raina’s nausea, Telgemeier brilliantly produces extremely accurate visual representations of stress and anxiety. Thought bubbles surround Raina in some panels, crowding her with anxious “what if”s, while in others her negative self-talk appears to be literally crushing her. Even as she copes with anxiety disorder and what is eventually diagnosed as mild irritable bowel syndrome, she experiences the typical stresses of school life, going from cheer to panic in the blink of an eye. Raina is white, and her classmates are diverse; one best friend is Korean American.
With young readers diagnosed with anxiety in ever increasing numbers, this book offers a necessary mirror to many. (Graphic memoir. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-545-85251-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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