This direct and heartwarming biography follows the life of Ricardo Romo from his boyhood in San Antonio, Texas, as the son of small grocers, through his hard work and successes as a high-school and university athlete and into his adult life as a schoolteacher, professor and university president. Focusing both on family love and responsibilities, and his school successes and disappointments (his junior-high counselor suggested he not attend a college-preparatory high school), Bertrand portrays a boy and young man always ready to contribute to his family or team and prepared to push himself as far as he can. Accardo's old-fashioned and realistic artwork suits the time period—the 1940s through the 1960s—with rich colors and strong, simple lines, reminiscent of those in coloring books. Both English and Spanish texts are smooth, inviting and squarely aimed at young readers. (Picture book/biography. 8-11)
Pub Date: May 31, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-55885-481-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Piñata Books/Arte Público
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2007
Categories: CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
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Prose poems celebrate the feats of young heroines, some of them famous, and some not as well-known. Paul (Hello Toes! Hello Feet!, 1998, etc.) recounts moments in the lives of women such as Rachel Carson, Amelia Earhart, and Wilma Rudolph; these moments don’t necessarily reflect what made them famous as much as they are pivotal events in their youth that influenced the direction of their lives. For Earhart, it was sliding down the roof of the tool shed in a home-made roller coaster: “It’s like flying!” For Rudolph, it was the struggle to learn to walk without her foot brace. Other women, such as Violet Sheehy, who rescued her family from a fire in Hinckley, Minnesota, or Harriet Hanson, a union supporter in the fabric mills of Massachusetts, are celebrated for their brave decisions made under extreme duress. Steirnagle’s sweeping paintings powerfully exude the strength of character exhibited by these young women. A commemorative book, that honors both quiet and noisy acts of heroism. (Picture book/poetry. 6-9)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-15-201477-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
Categories: CHILDREN'S POETRY | CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
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Ringgold’s biography of Rosa Parks packs substantial material into a few pages, but with a light touch, and with the ring of authenticity that gives her act of weary resistance all the respect it deserves. Narrating the book is the bus that Parks took that morning 45 years ago; it recounts the signal events in Parks’s life to a young girl who boarded it to go to school. A decent amount of the material will probably be new to children, for Parks is so intimately associated with the Montgomery Bus Boycott that her work with the NAACP before the bus incident is often overlooked, as is her later role as a community activist in Detroit with Congressman John Conyers. Ringgold, through the bus, also informs readers of Parks’s youth in rural Alabama, where Klansmen and nightriders struck fear into the lives of African-Americans. These experiences make her refusal to release her seat all the more courageous, for the consequences of resistance were not gentle. All the events are depicted in emotive naive artwork that underscores their truth; Ringgold delivers Parks’s story without hyperbole, but rather as a life lived with pride, conviction, and consequence. (Picture book/biography. 5-9)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-689-81892-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
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