An accessible introduction to a hip-hop virtuoso that trusts teens’ ability to tackle complex social issues.
A thorough and approachable tour through the life, impact, and artistry of a rap luminary.
Teen hip-hop heads and novices alike will relish this biography of Kendrick Lamar, a revered Black artist whose work has been in dialogue with America’s racial and political landscape for over a decade. The introductory chapters describe Lamar’s multifaceted youth. Even his supportive parents, who explained to an artistic and conscientious young Lamar how their Section 8 housing worked, couldn’t spare him from the harrowing realities of 1990s Compton. The narrative follows him as he refines his craft from early mixtapes to a Pulitzer-winning album, peppering in funny anecdotes and A-lister cameos, such as when hip-hop titan Dr. Dre called and Lamar, thinking it was a prank, hung up. The biography successfully highlights how Lamar not only lived through the shifting American discourse on race but helped shape it, from sharing the personal pain of poverty and racism to providing a soundtrack and rallying cry for Black Lives Matter protests with his hit “Alright.” Throughout, text boxes and single-page segments introduce related people and concepts, including Tupac Shakur and freestyle rap. Mooney acknowledges and contextualizes themes from Lamar’s work, such as police brutality, substance abuse, and sex addiction, without sensationalizing them, highlighting his skills as a storyteller.
An accessible introduction to a hip-hop virtuoso that trusts teens’ ability to tackle complex social issues. (glossary, source notes, selected bibliography, further information, index, photo acknowledgments) (Biography. 13-18)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2026
ISBN: 9798765688632
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Twenty-First Century/Lerner
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Small but mighty necessary reading.
A miniature manifesto for radical queer acceptance that weaves together the personal and political.
Eli, a cis gay white Jewish man, uses his own identities and experiences to frame and acknowledge his perspective. In the prologue, Eli compares the global Jewish community to the global queer community, noting, “We don’t always get it right, but the importance of showing up for other Jews has been carved into the DNA of what it means to be Jewish. It is my dream that queer people develop the same ideology—what I like to call a Global Queer Conscience.” He details his own isolating experiences as a queer adolescent in an Orthodox Jewish community and reflects on how he and so many others would have benefitted from a robust and supportive queer community. The rest of the book outlines 10 principles based on the belief that an expectation of mutual care and concern across various other dimensions of identity can be integrated into queer community values. Eli’s prose is clear, straightforward, and powerful. While he makes some choices that may be divisive—for example, using the initialism LGBTQIAA+ which includes “ally”—he always makes clear those are his personal choices and that the language is ever evolving.
Small but mighty necessary reading. (resources) (Nonfiction. 14-18)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09368-9
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
A visceral window into a survivor’s childhood and a testament to the enduring influence of unconditional love.
As palliative for his beloved Abuela's worsening dementia, memoirist Ogle offers her a book of childhood recollections.
Cast in episodic rushes of free verse and paralleling events chronicled in Free Lunch (2019) and Punching Bag (2021), the poems take the author from age 4 until college in a mix of love notes to his devoted, hardworking, Mexican grandmother; gnawing memories of fights and racial and homophobic taunts at school as he gradually becomes aware of his sexuality; and bitter clashes with both his mother, described as a harsh, self-centered deadbeat with seemingly not one ounce of love to give or any other redeeming feature, and the distant White father who threw him out the instant he came out. Though overall the poems are less about the author’s grandmother than about his own angst and issues (with searing blasts of enmity reserved for his birthparents), a picture of a loving intergenerational relationship emerges, offering moments of shared times and supportive exchanges amid the raw tallies of beat downs at home, sudden moves to escape creditors, and screaming quarrels. “My memories of a wonderful woman are written in words and verses and fragments in this book,” he writes in a foreword, “unable to be unwritten. And if it is forgotten, it can always be read again.”
A visceral window into a survivor’s childhood and a testament to the enduring influence of unconditional love. (Verse memoir. 13-18)Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-324-01995-4
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Norton Young Readers
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
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