An important window into the ravages of colonialism and the plight of the Indigenous peoples of Mexico.
Luz Jiménez lives with her family in a Mexican village.
They do not speak the language of their Spanish conquerors among themselves. Nahuatl is what they, the descendants of the powerful Aztecs, speak instead. Luz learns how to weave, to make tortillas, and to find medicinal herbs, but she also wants to learn how to read. When the Mexican government decides to “modernize” the Indigenous peoples, Native children are forced to adapt to the European style of dress and to forget their culture and languages. However, Luz does not forget. After her father is killed in a massacre by revolutionary soldiers, her mother flees with her and her sisters to Mexico City, where she comes to the attention of artists, photographers, and anthropologists. Finally, Luz’s culture and language are being recognized and appreciated. College students and anthropologists learn and record them before they disappear forever, and Luz is proud to have helped save the flower-song of her people. Amescua succeeds in introducing Luz, who became the embodiment of the “soul of Mexico.” The author’s note serves to fill in any informational gaps. Tonatiuh’s signature artwork once again nearly tells the story by itself. Closely following the text, the illustrations bring Luz to life. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
An important window into the ravages of colonialism and the plight of the Indigenous peoples of Mexico. (timeline, glossary, notes, bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 6-11)Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4020-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
Well-informed and much-idealized if not entirely simplistic pictures of both the great man and his bustling estate.
Stepping carefully around the controversies, a former curator at Monticello reconstructs the septuagenarian Jefferson’s active daily round.
Jefferson’s fixed routine begins with a faithful recording of temperature and weather at first rising and ends with a final period of solitary reading by candlelight in his unusual alcove bed. In between, the author describes in often fussy detail the range of his interests and enterprises. There’s not only his “polygraph” and other beloved gadgets, but also meals, family members, visitors, and excursions to Monticello’s diverse gardens, workshops and outbuildings. Like the dialogue, which mixes inventions with historical utterances, the generous suite of visuals includes photos of furnishings and artifacts as well as stodgy full-page tableaux and vignettes painted by Elliott. The “slaves” or “enslaved” workers (the author uses the terms interchangeably) that Jefferson encounters through the day are all historical and named—but Sally Hemings and her Jeffersonian offspring are conspicuously absent (aside from a brief name check buried in the closing timeline). Jefferson adroitly sidesteps a pointed question from his grandson, who accompanies him on his rounds, by pleading his age: “The work of ending slavery is for the young.”
Well-informed and much-idealized if not entirely simplistic pictures of both the great man and his bustling estate. (sidebars, endnotes, bibliography) (Nonfiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4197-0541-0
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
Routine assignment fodder.
A standard-issue profile of the renowned activist—one of a spate launched by his death in December 2013.
Doeden opens with Mandela on trial for treason in 1964, closes with a quote from Barack Obama’s eulogy and in between covers the civil rights leader’s long career from childhood to final illness. Small news photos and boxed discussions of apartheid and Steve Biko’s brief life accompany a narrative that reads like a term paper—though, looking at the paltry lists of notes and sources at the end, an inadequately documented one. Along with plenty of similar bio-trivia, readers will find out that Mandela moved from village schools in Qunu and Mqhekezweni to Clarkebury Boarding Institute, Healdtown and the University of Fort Hare before getting a correspondence-course law degree from the University of South Africa…but not why any of that is worth knowing or what light it sheds on his character, achievements and historical significance. Yona Zeldis McDonough’s Peaceful Protest (illustrated by Malcah Zeldis, 2002) or Kadir Nelson’s terse but masterful Nelson Mandela (2013) supply clearer, more cogent tributes.
Routine assignment fodder. (further reading, websites, index) (Biography. 8-11)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4677-5197-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Lerner
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
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