A lyrical look at challenges faced by immigrants of color and how they’ve flourished.
These poems celebrating immigrants of color are “created, written and illustrated by first- and second-generation immigrants of color.”
The biographies are of people from different parts of the world who have come to the United States and made significant contributions in their various fields, raising awareness of their many challenges and the wide range of immigration stories. They include the well known, like Somali American Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) and world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who’s Chinese American, as well as ones whose achievements are far less recognized, like Paralympic medalist Alejandro Albor, a Mexican American; Korean American comics artist Jim Lee; and the Latinx poet/activist group, the Undocupoets. The inspirational, free-verse poems, all penned by Salazar, briefly share each immigrant’s journey to the United States and beyond. One double-page spread is allotted to each, each illustrated by a different artist; the art is diverse in style, uniformly well crafted, and appropriately kid focused for each subject. Tracy Guiteau’s portrait of a young Edwidge Danticat, for instance, places her with a giant pencil and a blank book against the bright buildings of Port-au-Prince. Backmatter includes brief extended bios of all the people featured along with contributor bios and notes from Chau, who conceived the book, and Salazar. Though a natural choice during immigration and poetry units, it’s more an inspiration and introduction than a research tool in itself.
A lyrical look at challenges faced by immigrants of color and how they’ve flourished. (Picture book/poetry. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-55287-4
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
During a school year in which a gifted teacher who emphasizes personal responsibility among his fifth graders ends up in a coma from a thrown snowball, his students come to terms with their own issues and learn to be forgiving. Told in short chapters organized month-by-month in the voices of seven students, often describing the same incident from different viewpoints, this weaves together a variety of not-uncommon classroom characters and situations: the new kid, the trickster, the social bully, the super-bright and the disaffected; family clashes, divorce and death; an unwed mother whose long-ago actions haven't been forgotten in the small-town setting; class and experiential differences. Mr. Terupt engineers regular visits to the school’s special-needs classroom, changing some lives on both sides. A "Dollar Word" activity so appeals to Luke that he sprinkles them throughout his narrative all year. Danielle includes her regular prayers, and Anna never stops her hopeful matchmaking. No one is perfect in this feel-good story, but everyone benefits, including sentimentally inclined readers. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-73882-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
