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From: Megan Schliesman <Schliesman>
Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 12:07:38 -0600
As we head into the final week of December let's continue building on the list of the years's favorites that so many of you have shared.
Something we've noted here at the CCBC this year is what a wonderful year it has been for biography and autobiography in publising for the young. At the moment, I can't recall if anyone has already mentioned Ida B. Wells: Mother of the Civil Rights Movement by Dennis and Judith Bloom Fradin (Clarion), which is one of the most striking biographies I've read this year. Before reading this book, I had a sense of Ida B. Wells and her accomplishments as an African American writer, publishers and advocate against lynching. But after reading this book, she will forever stand out in my mind as a true crusader--what a phenomenal woman! I appreciate being able to come away from this reading with that sense as well as a more deeper, more complex understanding of the fight to outlaw lynching (and lynching itself is also presented in the book in a way that made me feel shock and horror, as one should).
I also greatly appreciated Pick & Shovel Poet: The Journeys of Pascal D'Angelo by Jim Murphy (also published by Clarion). Pascal D'Angelo came to the United States from Italy as a teenager in 1910. His story is at once singular and part of the immigrant story of this nation. His determination to learn English and then to write while working (when work could be found )at the hard labor jobs in which so many immigrants were underpaid, ill-treated and exploited is wonderfully told by Murphy.
Megan
Megan Schliesman, Librarian Cooperative Children's Book Center School of Education UW-Madison 608&2?03 schliesman at education.wisc.edu
Received on Fri 22 Dec 2000 12:07:38 PM CST
Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 12:07:38 -0600
As we head into the final week of December let's continue building on the list of the years's favorites that so many of you have shared.
Something we've noted here at the CCBC this year is what a wonderful year it has been for biography and autobiography in publising for the young. At the moment, I can't recall if anyone has already mentioned Ida B. Wells: Mother of the Civil Rights Movement by Dennis and Judith Bloom Fradin (Clarion), which is one of the most striking biographies I've read this year. Before reading this book, I had a sense of Ida B. Wells and her accomplishments as an African American writer, publishers and advocate against lynching. But after reading this book, she will forever stand out in my mind as a true crusader--what a phenomenal woman! I appreciate being able to come away from this reading with that sense as well as a more deeper, more complex understanding of the fight to outlaw lynching (and lynching itself is also presented in the book in a way that made me feel shock and horror, as one should).
I also greatly appreciated Pick & Shovel Poet: The Journeys of Pascal D'Angelo by Jim Murphy (also published by Clarion). Pascal D'Angelo came to the United States from Italy as a teenager in 1910. His story is at once singular and part of the immigrant story of this nation. His determination to learn English and then to write while working (when work could be found )at the hard labor jobs in which so many immigrants were underpaid, ill-treated and exploited is wonderfully told by Murphy.
Megan
Megan Schliesman, Librarian Cooperative Children's Book Center School of Education UW-Madison 608&2?03 schliesman at education.wisc.edu
Received on Fri 22 Dec 2000 12:07:38 PM CST
