Marlene Targ Brill

Meet community organizer Dolores Huerta, who travels from poverty to political victory, becoming only the second Mexican-American woman in history to be honored with a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

A biography for the times, Brill’s narrative tells the story of a farm laborer’s daughter born during the Great Depression. Raised in Stockton, California, where her father, brother, and nearly everyone she knew picked vegetables and fruits for a living, Dolores lamented the poverty and the show more brutal conditions under which her community was forced to labor. Her sense of injustice only grew when the excellent work she did at school earned her an accusation of plagiarism. Spurred to action by her life experiences and a desire to help her people, Dolores joined forces with César Chávez to start the United Farm Workers Union. Borrowing Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolent protest, they set out to change the way their people were treated with a successful grape strike that gained them nationwide sympathy. Weaving in quotes from Huerta and others, Brill paints a vivid picture of her subject and calls attention to a civil rights leader who was often overshadowed by her male counterpart even as she fought sexism in her own community. A helpful timeline, glossary, and “Did You Know?” sections in each chapter serve as aids in this historic biography. An excellent read for anyone hoping to believe one person can make a difference.

Young readers will recognize Dolores Huerta’s rallying cry “Yes, we can!” even as they are inspired by her vision for a better world. (Biography. 7-14)

-Kirkus Review show less

After reading Selby B. Beeler's Throw Your Tooth on the Roof: Tooth Traditions from Around the World, which outlines some of the folk beliefs and customs concerning the disposal of baby teeth found throughout the world, I thought it would be interesting to track down a collection of tooth-themed folktales. This book from Marlene Targ Brill seemed like it would fit the bill admirably, but despite its deceptive title, Tooth Tales from Around the World is not a collection of tales at all, but show more (like the Beeler book) a brief discussion of various folk beliefs regarding baby teeth.

Unfortunately, it is not as thorough as Throw Your Tooth on the Roof (which wasn't comprehensive itself), and really added little to my understanding of this kind of belief. I did appreciate that Brill attempted to show the evolution of certain customs, and provided a list of sources, but her details were so scant, her discussion so general, that I wasn't really any more well-informed after reading her book, than I was before. The final page, which struck a fellow reader as a triumphalist celebration of one belief (in the Tooth Fairy) over others, was so ambiguously worded, that I wasn't sure what to make of it.

Katya Krenina's gouache illustrations, with their lovely purple tones, were quite appealing, but not enough to save Tooth Tales from Around the World. All in all, this was a disappointment, and I recommend that young readers with an interest in this subject look to the Beeler book instead. As for me, I guess I'll have to keep hoping for a collection of actual tooth tales to be published. show less

This is a moving, excellent easy read (at only 64 pages) describing the Trail of Tears, the ethnic cleansing of the Cherokee from the South-eastern United States. The book starts with a short description of John Ross and his wife Quatie who headed the final group of refugees as they make their way to what is now Oklahoma. With her death en route the book switches to a brief history and description of the Cherokee, focusing on their relationship with Europeans. The book has a relatively show more narrow scope, following a few personalities in particular and centering on how Cherokee culture changed in response to interaction with American settlers, and is very well researched, with an extensive (for its size) bibliography and further reading.
The book is balanced and fair, describing a band of Cherokee who fought the Americans during the Revolutionary for example, and leaving it to the reader to percieve the horror of a forced migration where one in four (particularly the very young and very old) died on the way from eastern Tennessee and northern Georgia to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). Furthermore, the book clearly presents the political and legal aspects of the relationship between the Cherokee, the states (particularly Georgia), and the federal government, as treaties are made and broken, again and again. In this the reader experiences the feeling of causing a car wreck stretched out over sixty pages.
This book contains interesting illustrations, though not many. I felt the book could use a more detailed map, though there is an interesting portrait of John Ross standing in front of a map, and the reader eventually does come across a map showing the route, though many of the places described in the narrative are not shown. I felt there could have been more information on Sequoyah and his syllabary, though there is a sidebar with some information on him. I was pleased the book contained a photograph of the Phoenix, an English-Cherokee newspaper, which gives some impression of the way the language looks, though I feel this picture could have been enlarged just a little to make the Cherokee a little more legible. The book does not mention much of what happens once the Cherokee reach Indian Territory, as the scope of this book is primarily to explain how the migration came about.
One serious problem I do have with the book concerns a man named Elias Boudinot, who was a president under the Articles of Confederation, founder of the American Bible Society, and noted missionary who campaigned for the rights of Blacks and Native Americans. I was interested when I read the he was the first editor of the Phoenix, and also played an important (and perhaps unpalatable) role in the build-up to the migration. I thought it strange his other accomplishments were not mentioned though, and discovered on Wikipedia that the Elias Boudinot of this book was in fact a Cherokee friend of the first Elias Boudinot who was so impressed with him that he took his name. This is a small piece of trivia, perhaps, but definitely one that could be confusing and certainly is not explained in this book.
I think that on the whole this is an excellent and moving account of an important incident in American history. I imagine many people today would not believe what happened was possible, as many people of the time did not. Namely, a Native American tribe that pursued peace, cooperation, and assimilation as earnestly as possible was still subject to massacre, eviction, and loss of civil rights. The book is not a very difficult read, and I can imagine an advanced middle schooler would have little difficulty reading it. Further, I imagine most high schoolers could, and this book could very easily fit into an American history classroom, and would be very interesting in a Civics class. show less

I thought that Barack Obama: Working to Make a Difference was a very well-written biography of the man who will be our next president. Having read Barack Obama's books, Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope, I can say that the information contained in this biography for kids seems accurate and complete, except for the mis-spelling of his oldest daughter's name, which is listed a “Maile” in two different places in the book and should read, “Malia”. The book also doesn't show more mention that President-elect Obama's youngest daughter, Natasha, usually goes by the nickname, “Sasha”, but that is a relatively minor thing. The book covers the time from Barack Obama's birth to his Senate win and hits all the most important points, though there is nothing of his time in the Senate or his campaign for the presidency. Overall though, in my opinion, this is a great book for young readers to learn more about the man who is soon to be president, and even though I didn't learn anything new, adults who are unfamiliar with his life story to date may find it useful as a quick primer. Barack Obama: Working to Make a Difference is part of the Gateway Biographies series, an extensive series of biographies of famous people written just for young readers. show less