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Articles by Ruby Bridges
IF I COULD CHOOSE A BEST DAY
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Bridges Goes to School, but here the sensibility is more personal, and the sometimes-shocking historical photos have been replaced by uplifting painted scenes.
FACING MIGHTY FEARS ABOUT BEING APART FROM P… | Kirkus Reviews
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40. From two Nobel Peace Prize winners, an invitation to look past sadness and loneliness to the joy that surrounds us. Bobbing in the wake of 2016’s heavyweight Book of Joy (2016), this brief but buoyant address to young readers offers an earnest insight: “If you just focus on the thing that is making / you sad, then the sadness is all you see.
GLENN BURKE, GAME CHANGER
A bittersweet legacy now accessible to younger readers and sports fans. Following up his middle-grade novel A High Five for Glenn Burke (2020), Bildner pens a picture-book biography about a remarkable gay Black baseball player. A rare “five-tool talent” (he could run, catch, throw, and hit for both average and power), young Glenn Burke was snatched up by the Dodgers, and teammates and fans alike soon delighted in his high-spirited humor and enthusiasm for the team and game they loved.
IF LIN CAN | Kirkus Reviews
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.
KING CHARLES | Kirkus Reviews
From the Little People, BIG DREAMS series by Maria Isabel Sánchez Vegara ; illustrated by Matt Hunt ‧ A quick profile of “the longest-serving heir in British history.” Though as bland as its subject’s public persona and so compressed that the multiple schools “little Charles Philip Arthur George” attended on his way to college are reduced to one—illustrated with a historically unlikely view of the young prince being paraded before a racially diverse line of fellow students—this thumbnail...
JOVITA WORE PANTS
THE STORY OF A MEXICAN FREEDOM FIGHTER by Aida Salazar ; illustrated by Molly Mendoza ‧ A young Mexican freedom fighter proves that traditional gender roles aren’t important—heart is. Born in 1911, Jovita Valdovinos was just 14 years old when the resistance that would later become the Cristero Revolution began in her rural community. The newly installed socialist government was cracking down on religious freedom, and many of Mexico’s poor were beginning to fight back.
ALL RISE | Kirkus Reviews
THE STORY OF KETANJI BROWN JACKSON by Carole Boston Weatherford ; illustrated by Ashley Evans ‧ A praise song for the U.S. Supreme Court’s first Black woman justice.
WEI SKATES ON | Kirkus Reviews
by Nathan Chen ; illustrated by Lorraine Nam ‧ Champion figure skater Chen tells the story of a young athlete whose first competition doesn’t go quite as planned. In the author’s note, Chen shares that “Wei’s story is my story.” Indeed, Wei is Chen’s Chinese name, and the action of the book tracks with his much-hyped but disappointing turn in the 2018 Olympics, followed by a gold medal win in 2022.
THE SMALLEST SPOT OF A DOT
THE LITTLE WAYS WE’RE DIFFERENT, THE BIG WAYS WE’RE THE SAME by Linsey Davis & Michael Tyler ; illustrated by Lucy Fleming ‧ A rhymed celebration of human individuality within our genetic commonality.
PUT YOUR SHOES ON & GET READY!
by Raphael G. Warnock ; illustrated by TeMika Grooms ‧ Georgia’s first Black senator urges readers to get up, get dressed, and find the right shoes for what they’re going to do. Warnock offers a shoe-based view of his own experiences—donning boots each summer to help his dad haul old cars and church shoes on Sundays to hear him preach, high-tops to play basketball, and pastor and activist shoes as a grown-up.
A PLACE TO BELONG
An impassioned musician shared her talents globally. Jewish singer/songwriter Debbie Friedman (1951-2011) loved music and her faith. When she was a child, her family moved from upstate New York to St. Paul, Minnesota, where she felt adrift before enrolling in Hebrew school. Deeply religious, she found solace in prayers and rituals. Later, working at a Jewish summer camp, she found comfort in music and grew to love the popular folksongs of the 1960s.
LITTLE BLACK LIVES MATTER
by Khodi Dill ; illustrated by Chelsea Charles ‧ An ode to Black children, affirming their worth and teaching them about those who walked the path of greatness ahead of them.
STORY QUILTS | Kirkus Reviews
The scraps of Appalachian lives, forgotten by many, persist in the memories marked by thread and bits of cloth. Green pines, blue mountains, and star-frosted skies peek out of squares stitched together by weathered hands that cooked, cleaned, canned, and gardened all day long. Quilts that would one day hang in museums lovingly sheltered families on cold Blue Ridge nights. Girls would watch their mamas until one day their young hands learned to gather squares and form quilts of their own.
THE LITTLE BOOK OF JOY
by Dalai Lama & Desmond Tutu ; illustrated by Rafael López ‧ From two Nobel Peace Prize winners, an invitation to look past sadness and loneliness to the joy that surrounds us. Bobbing in the wake of 2016’s heavyweight Book of Joy (2016), this brief but buoyant address to young readers offers an earnest insight: “If you just focus on the thing that is making / you sad, then the sadness is all you see.
20 Back-to-School Picture Books
The Magazine: Featuring 365 industry-first reviews of fiction, nonfiction, children’s and YA books; also in this special Fall Preview issue: 150 books that will add color to the fall season; interviews with Richard Osman, Nina Totenberg, Ruby Bridges, and more
Best Chapter Books of 2020
The Magazine: Kirkus Reviews The best 100 fiction and best 200 children's books of the year plus our full November 15 issue. subscribe
The 16 Best Books To Read in November
The Magazine: Kirkus Reviews Bestselling crime writer Tana French discusses the inspiration for her new stand-alone novel. subscribe
THIS IS YOUR TIME
From the They Did What? series Why should grown-ups get all the historical, scientific, athletic, cinematic, and artistic glory? Choosing exemplars from both past and present, Mitchell includes but goes well beyond Alexander the Great, Anne Frank, and like usual suspects to introduce a host of lesser-known luminaries.
BENJAMIN AND THE WORD
BENJAMIN Y LA PALABRA by Daniel A. Olivas & illustrated by Don Dyen ‧ When Benjamin defeats his friend James in a game at school, James calls him a name, the “word” of the title. While the name itself is never mentioned, Benjamin’s talk with his father about his hurt feelings makes it clear that James has insulted Benjamin because his heritage is mixed: half-Russian Jew, half-Mexican.
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