A slam dunk choice for role modeling.
A pep talk featuring Jeremy Lin, the first athlete of Chinese or Taiwanese descent to play in the NBA.
“Have you ever been told that you can’t?” With growing rhetorical force, Ho asks readers if they’ve ever felt misunderstood or disheartened. “You’re not alone,” he reassures them. “Have you ever turned on a television or opened a newspaper and discovered someone who looked like you?” The author goes on to show how Lin shrugged off naysayers and those who “made fun of his size, his race, and his game.” As a professional player, he was cut from his first team and continued to warm benches. He persevered, however, until, one February night in 2012, he was at last given the opportunity to show his dazzling stuff and ignited a season of “Linsanity” with the New York Knicks. Illustrations of three solitary, Asian-presenting children alternately ignored or surrounded by scoffing peers give way to scenes of the young Lin enduring similar treatment, including, in one scene, hearing catcalls from a dark-skinned young skeptic standing next to a light-skinned one mocking Lin’s eyes. But he works through it all and is ready when his chance comes to shine. “Now ask yourself,” the author concludes, “if Lin can, why can’t I?” Good question.
A slam dunk choice for role modeling. (more information on Lin, afterword, author’s note, bibliography) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781623543723
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses.
An NBA star pays tribute to the influence of his grandfather.
In the same vein as his Long Shot (2009), illustrated by Frank Morrison, this latest from Paul prioritizes values and character: “My granddad Papa Chilly had dreams that came true,” he writes, “so maybe if I listen and watch him, / mine will too.” So it is that the wide-eyed Black child in the simply drawn illustrations rises early to get to the playground hoops before anyone else, watches his elder working hard and respecting others, hears him cheering along with the rest of the family from the stands during games, and recalls in a prose afterword that his grandfather wasn’t one to lecture but taught by example. Paul mentions in both the text and the backmatter that Papa Chilly was the first African American to own a service station in North Carolina (his presumed dream) but not that he was killed in a robbery, which has the effect of keeping the overall tone positive and the instructional content one-dimensional. Figures in the pictures are mostly dark-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-250-81003-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
A unique angle on a watershed moment in the civil rights era.
The New Orleans school child who famously broke the color line in 1960 while surrounded by federal marshals describes the early days of her experience from a 6-year-old’s perspective.
Bridges told her tale to younger children in 2009’s Ruby Bridges Goes to School, but here the sensibility is more personal, and the sometimes-shocking historical photos have been replaced by uplifting painted scenes. “I didn’t find out what being ‘the first’ really meant until the day I arrived at this new school,” she writes. Unfrightened by the crowd of “screaming white people” that greets her at the school’s door (she thinks it’s like Mardi Gras) but surprised to find herself the only child in her classroom, and even the entire building, she gradually realizes the significance of her act as (in Smith’s illustration) she compares a small personal photo to the all-White class photos posted on a bulletin board and sees the difference. As she reflects on her new understanding, symbolic scenes first depict other dark-skinned children marching into classes in her wake to friendly greetings from lighter-skinned classmates (“School is just school,” she sensibly concludes, “and kids are just kids”) and finally an image of the bright-eyed icon posed next to a soaring bridge of reconciliation. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A unique angle on a watershed moment in the civil rights era. (author and illustrator notes, glossary) (Autobiographical picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-338-75388-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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