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AFRICAN AMERICAN HEALERS

Name: AFRICAN AMERICAN HEALERS
Author: Clinton Cox
ISBN: 0-471-24650-6

by Clinton Cox ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 2000

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Brief biographies of two dozen African-American doctors, nurses, and healers from the earliest days of this country to the present comprise this latest in the Black Star series. Biographies are divided into four chronological sections. Particularly in the early chapters, it is interesting to note how often information is simply lost: James Durham of New Orleans, first black doctor in the United States, vanishes from history after 1802, and it is not known when or where Civil War nurse Susie King Taylor, who published an autobiography in 1902, died. The struggles of black healers to secure a medical education when so many schools were closed to them and to continue their training in segregated hospitals come across clearly in story after story. Daniel Hale Williams was the first person to perform heart surgery (in 1893—the patient lived another 50 years), and Charles Richard Drew invented the blood bank in the 1930s. Minor misspellings and a wrong definition aside (obstetrics is the branch of medicine dealing directly or indirectly with birth, not a “branch . . . that deals with children”), the text is clear; it can be coy in spots, not defining, for example, what syphilis is, nor explaining why Jocelyn Elders had to resign from the office of the Surgeon General. (index, not seen, b&w photos, chronology, notes, bibliography) (Biography. 10-14)

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2000

ISBN: 0-471-24650-6

Page Count: 156

Publisher: Wiley

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1999

Categories:

CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
HOUDINI
by Clinton Cox

- BOOK REVIEW
COME ALL YOU BRAVE SOLDIERS
by Clinton Cox

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FORGOTTEN HEROES
by Clinton Cox

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ALL BY HERSELF

POEMS

by Ann Whitford Paul ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1999

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Prose poems celebrate the feats of young heroines, some of them famous, and some not as well-known. Paul (Hello Toes! Hello Feet!, 1998, etc.) recounts moments in the lives of women such as Rachel Carson, Amelia Earhart, and Wilma Rudolph; these moments don’t necessarily reflect what made them famous as much as they are pivotal events in their youth that influenced the direction of their lives. For Earhart, it was sliding down the roof of the tool shed in a home-made roller coaster: “It’s like flying!” For Rudolph, it was the struggle to learn to walk without her foot brace. Other women, such as Violet Sheehy, who rescued her family from a fire in Hinckley, Minnesota, or Harriet Hanson, a union supporter in the fabric mills of Massachusetts, are celebrated for their brave decisions made under extreme duress. Steirnagle’s sweeping paintings powerfully exude the strength of character exhibited by these young women. A commemorative book, that honors both quiet and noisy acts of heroism. (Picture book/poetry. 6-9)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-15-201477-2

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999

Categories:

CHILDREN'S POETRY | CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
IF ANIMALS CELEBRATED EASTER
by Ann Whitford Paul ; illustrated by David Walker

- BOOK REVIEW
IF ANIMALS TRICK-OR-TREATED
by Ann Whitford Paul ; illustrated by David Walker

- BOOK REVIEW
WHO LOVES LITTLE LEMUR?
by Ann Whitford Paul ; illustrated by Jay Fleck

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IF A BUS COULD TALK

THE STORY OF ROSA PARKS

by Faith Ringgold ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1999

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Ringgold’s biography of Rosa Parks packs substantial material into a few pages, but with a light touch, and with the ring of authenticity that gives her act of weary resistance all the respect it deserves. Narrating the book is the bus that Parks took that morning 45 years ago; it recounts the signal events in Parks’s life to a young girl who boarded it to go to school. A decent amount of the material will probably be new to children, for Parks is so intimately associated with the Montgomery Bus Boycott that her work with the NAACP before the bus incident is often overlooked, as is her later role as a community activist in Detroit with Congressman John Conyers. Ringgold, through the bus, also informs readers of Parks’s youth in rural Alabama, where Klansmen and nightriders struck fear into the lives of African-Americans. These experiences make her refusal to release her seat all the more courageous, for the consequences of resistance were not gentle. All the events are depicted in emotive naive artwork that underscores their truth; Ringgold delivers Parks’s story without hyperbole, but rather as a life lived with pride, conviction, and consequence. (Picture book/biography. 5-9)