This warm memoir will connect with young readers and inspire them to value their own stories.
A former first lady shares stories from her life to encourage young readers.
Michelle Robinson was born and raised in a warm and supportive working-class neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois. Despite her father’s diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, he continued working as a city laborer while her mother was a homemaker. Both of her parents were staunch believers in education, providing Michelle and her brother with the support they needed to succeed. After attending a magnet high school, she followed her brother to Princeton before she got a law degree from Harvard. It was while working as a lawyer that she met and mentored Barack Obama, a young man of mixed race whose upbringing was vastly different from her own. Nevertheless, they fell in love, married, became parents, and embarked on a remarkable life of activism and politics, culminating in two historic terms in the White House. This young readers’ adaptation follows a similar format to the enormously successful adult original. Obama does not shy away from describing the insecurities she overcame as she acquired her Ivy League education, nor the difficulties she had with her husband’s choice to pursue politics. Anecdotes about her coming-of-age, experiences on the campaign trail, and life in the White House are compelling. Throughout the lively narrative, she expresses an encouraging tone as she tells her story with accessibility and intimacy.
This warm memoir will connect with young readers and inspire them to value their own stories. (photo credits) (Memoir. 10-16)Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-30374-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
IN THE NEWS
Hot on the heels of the well-received Leonardo da Vinci (2005) comes another agreeably chatty entry in the Giants of Science series. Here the pioneering physicist is revealed as undeniably brilliant, but also cantankerous, mean-spirited, paranoid and possibly depressive. Newton’s youth and annus mirabilis receive respectful treatment, the solitude enforced by family estrangement and then the plague seen as critical to the development of his thoughtful, methodical approach. His subsequent squabbles with the rest of the scientific community—he refrained from publishing one treatise until his rival was dead—further support the image of Newton as a scientific lone wolf. Krull’s colloquial treatment sketches Newton’s advances in clearly understandable terms without bogging the text down with detailed explanations. A final chapter on “His Impact” places him squarely in the pantheon of great thinkers, arguing that both his insistence on the scientific method and his theories of physics have informed all subsequent scientific thought. A bibliography, web site and index round out the volume; the lack of detail on the use of sources is regrettable in an otherwise solid offering for middle-grade students. (Biography. 10-14)
Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-670-05921-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2006
Ultimately adds little to conversations about race.
A popular YouTube series on race, “Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man,” turns how-to manual and history lesson for young readers.
Acho is a former NFL player and second-generation Nigerian American who cites his upbringing in predominantly White spaces as well as his tenure on largely Black football teams as qualifications for facilitating the titular conversations about anti-Black racism. The broad range of subjects covered here includes implicit bias, cultural appropriation, and systemic racism. Each chapter features brief overviews of American history, personal anecdotes of Acho’s struggles with his own anti-Black biases, and sections titled “Let’s Get Uncomfortable.” The book’s centering of Whiteness and White readers seems to show up, to the detriment of its subject matter, both in Acho’s accounts of his upbringing and his thought processes regarding race. The overall tone unfortunately conveys a sense of expecting little from a younger generation who may have a greater awareness than he did at the same age and who, therefore, may already be uncomfortable with racial injustice itself. The attempt at an avuncular tone disappointingly reads as condescending, revealing that, despite his online success with adults, the author is ill-equipped to be writing for middle-grade readers. Chapters dedicated to explaining to White readers why they shouldn’t use the N-word and how valuable White allyship is may make readers of color (and many White readers) bristle with indignation and discomfort despite Acho’s positive intentions.
Ultimately adds little to conversations about race. (glossary, FAQ, recommended reading, references) (Nonfiction. 10-14)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-80106-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2021
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