by Anita Ganeri ; illustrated by Margaux Carpentier ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 8, 2022
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
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by Raina Telgemeier ; illustrated by Raina Telgemeier ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 17, 2019
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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by Andrew Young & Paula Young Shelton ; illustrated by Gordon C. James ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 2, 2022
A pivotal moment in a child’s life, at once stirring and authentically personal.
Before growing up to become a major figure in the civil rights movement, a boy finds a role model.
Buffing up a childhood tale told by her renowned father, Young Shelton describes how young Andrew saw scary men marching in his New Orleans neighborhood (“It sounded like they were yelling ‘Hi, Hitler!’ ”). In response to his questions, his father took him to see a newsreel of Jesse Owens (“a runner who looked like me”) triumphing in the 1936 Olympics. “Racism is a sickness,” his father tells him. “We’ve got to help folks like that.” How? “Well, you can start by just being the best person you can be,” his father replies. “It’s what you do that counts.” In James’ hazy chalk pastels, Andrew joins racially diverse playmates (including a White child with an Irish accent proudly displaying the nickel he got from his aunt as a bribe to stop playing with “those Colored boys”) in tag and other games, playing catch with his dad, sitting in the midst of a cheering crowd in the local theater’s segregated balcony, and finally visualizing himself pelting down a track alongside his new hero—“head up, back straight, eyes focused,” as a thematically repeated line has it, on the finish line. An afterword by Young Shelton explains that she retold this story, told to her many times growing up, drawing from conversations with Young and from her own research; family photos are also included. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A pivotal moment in a child’s life, at once stirring and authentically personal. (illustrator’s note) (Autobiographical picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-545-55465-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
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