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THE BRIDGES YURI BUILT

HOW YURI KOCHIYAMA MARCHED ACROSS MOVEMENTS

Eloquent and inspiring.

A celebration of the life and legacy of a Japanese American Civil Rights activist.

Rather than directly urge readers to adopt her forebear Yuri Kochiyama as a role model, the author simply relates select experiences in her great-grandmother’s life that turned her into an activist and that portray her in action. Born in California and imprisoned in an Arkansas incarceration camp during World War II, Yuri formed a group of correspondents to write letters of support to Japanese American soldiers. Facing racial discrimination after the war as well, she then leveraged that organizing experience while quietly working her way into the inner circles of the Civil Rights Movement—she was close enough to Malcolm X to cradle his head in her lap moments after he was shot—and going on to be a freedom fighter, building bridges connecting many social causes. “For Yuri,” the author writes in her afterword, “solidarity was not an ideal but an embodied, necessary practice.” Images of her—a slight figure in owlish eyeglasses, raising a defiant fist, facing a New York shop window with signs reading “No Japs” and “Colored entrance in rear,” waving protest banners, hosting meetings and open houses in her Harlem apartment, and standing here with fellow activists and there alone at her ironing board writing letters—serve to underscore her lifelong energy and dedication.

Eloquent and inspiring. (Picture-book biography. 7-9)

Pub Date: April 2, 2024

ISBN: 9781960571007

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Kaepernick Publishing

Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024

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JUST LIKE JESSE OWENS

A pivotal moment in a child’s life, at once stirring and authentically personal.

Before growing up to become a major figure in the civil rights movement, a boy finds a role model.

Buffing up a childhood tale told by her renowned father, Young Shelton describes how young Andrew saw scary men marching in his New Orleans neighborhood (“It sounded like they were yelling ‘Hi, Hitler!’ ”). In response to his questions, his father took him to see a newsreel of Jesse Owens (“a runner who looked like me”) triumphing in the 1936 Olympics. “Racism is a sickness,” his father tells him. “We’ve got to help folks like that.” How? “Well, you can start by just being the best person you can be,” his father replies. “It’s what you do that counts.” In James’ hazy chalk pastels, Andrew joins racially diverse playmates (including a White child with an Irish accent proudly displaying the nickel he got from his aunt as a bribe to stop playing with “those Colored boys”) in tag and other games, playing catch with his dad, sitting in the midst of a cheering crowd in the local theater’s segregated balcony, and finally visualizing himself pelting down a track alongside his new hero—“head up, back straight, eyes focused,” as a thematically repeated line has it, on the finish line. An afterword by Young Shelton explains that she retold this story, told to her many times growing up, drawing from conversations with Young and from her own research; family photos are also included. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A pivotal moment in a child’s life, at once stirring and authentically personal. (illustrator’s note) (Autobiographical picture book. 7-9)

Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022

ISBN: 978-0-545-55465-7

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Scholastic

Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022

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I AM RUTH BADER GINSBURG

From the Ordinary People Change the World series

Quick and slick, but ably makes its case.

The distinguished jurist stands tall as a role model.

Not literally tall, of course—not only was she actually tiny but, as with all the other bobbleheaded caricatures in the “Ordinary People Change the World” series, Ginsburg, sporting huge eyeglasses on an outsize head over black judicial robes even in childhood, remains a doll-like figure in all of Eliopoulos’ cartoon scenes. It’s in the frank acknowledgment of the sexism and antisemitism she resolutely overcame as she went from reading about “real female heroes” to becoming one—and also the clear statement of how she so brilliantly applied the principle of “tikkun olam” (“repairing the world”) in her career to the notion that women and men should have the same legal rights—that her stature comes clear. For all the brevity of his profile, Meltzer spares some attention for her private life, too (“This is Marty. He loved me, and he loved my brains. So I married him!”). Other judicial activists of the past and present, all identified and including the current crop of female Supreme Court justices, line up with a diversely hued and abled group of younger followers to pay tribute in final scenes. “Fight for the things you care about,” as a typically savvy final quote has it, “but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”

Quick and slick, but ably makes its case. (timeline, photos, source list, further reading) (Picture-book biography. 7-9)

Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2024

ISBN: 9780593533338

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Rocky Pond Books/Penguin

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023

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