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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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