BILL PICKETT

From the creators of Dear Benjamin Banneker (1994), rip-snorting picture-book biography of the first African-American cowboy inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. Pickett, ``quick as a jackrabbit, more wide-eyed than a hooty owl,'' left home at 15, having already invented his famous bulldogging technique—controlling balky cattle by gripping their lips with his teeth and twisting. As a ``wild-riding South Texas brushpopper,'' he quickly earned a reputation working both ranches and the rodeo circuit, putting on shows from Mexico City to London, and making steer-wrestling the standard rodeo event it is today. Based on both published sources and interviews with one of Pickett's descendants (and with an afterword called ``More About Black Cowboys''), this covers the essentials of his career while casting Pickett in the mold of a folk hero. Although readers may be disappointed to see only one scene of Pickett performing his spectacularly gross trick (sinking his teeth into the lips of a steer), the swirling lines and brushstrokes of the scratchboard illustrations ably second the text's energy and vivid imagery. (bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 6-8)