A buoyant, instructional, timely, and offbeat biography.
The life story of Mexican-American voter registration activist William “Willie” Cárdenas Velásquez Jr., told through fictional letters written by him—30 years after his death.
González (Golondrina, Why Did You Leave Me?, 2009, etc.) draws upon her experience as a novelist to create an unusual account of his life, designed to educate and inspire older children and young teenagers. Narrator Velásquez tells his own story in the form of missives from beyond the grave to his mother, his wife, and beneficiaries of the DREAM Act, among others. He was born on May 9, 1944, in Orlando, Florida. When his father was shipped overseas soon after, his 18-year-old mother, Mary Louise, brought him back home to San Antonio, Texas. After graduating from that city’s St. Mary’s University, Velásquez originally planned to work as a diplomat in Washington, D.C.; he spent two summers working as an intern for U.S. Rep. Henry B. González (D-Texas). Then, on Labor Day, 1966, Velásquez’s passion was ignited by a farmworker’s protest in Austin. He realized that the key to dealing with problems affecting the Hispanic population in Texas—including flooding, lack of good jobs, and insufficient education—was to motivate Hispanics to register and vote for Hispanic representatives at all levels of government. In 1974, he helped found the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project; he died in 1988 at 44, credited with adding millions of Hispanics to the United States’ voter rolls. In 1995, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. As presented by native Texan González, the letters—written from the beyond with the approval of “the Big One,” according to Velásquez—are breezy, sometimes humorous, and conversational in style. The narrator effectively speaks to young readers directly: “Life is about knowing that the world isn’t fair. And it’s not fair so that you and me can learn to make it fair, get that?” González celebrates Velásquez in this imaginative book in a way that aims to give Latino kids pride and hope, and it’s likely to engage young audiences.
A buoyant, instructional, timely, and offbeat biography.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-948955-01-0
Page Count: 90
Publisher: Auris Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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