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Bookbag: Finding heroes on the bookshelves
From baseball player Roberto Clemente to writer Toni Morrison, read about these superheroes
The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
This is a season when we are looking for heroes and we can find them on the shelves of our favorite local bookstore or at the public library.
Call Me Roberto!
Sports fans will love reading “Call Me Roberto!” written by Nathalie Alonso and illustrated by Rudy Gutierrez (Calkins Creek, 2024; $18.99). Roberto Clemente was born in Carolina, Puerto Rico. As a boy he played baseball with a tin can and a tree branch. “Roberto lives to swing/and slide. /To catch. /To throw. /To run.” At the age of 19 he was spotted by a scout for a Major League team. Eventually he was signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates, where he spent his career, and played his first game in 1955.
In Pittsburgh some fans loved him and his exiting style of play. But others taunted him, newspaper articles made fun of him when he spoke English. People called him “Bob,” because they thought it made him “more American.” In 1960 he helps the Pirates to win the World Series but was voted eighth for the “Most Valuable Player Award. In 1971 when the Pirates win the World Series again Roberto hits a home run in the final game to help the Pirates win. This time he is named MVP of the World Series.
Clemente faced racism and ignorance with pride and skill. An author’s note tells us his career was ended when he died in an airplane accident while attempting to deliver supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua. We learn, too, that “Major League Baseball has designated Sept. 15 as Roberto Clemente Day, and each year the league awards the Roberto Clemente Award to an active player who embodies his values.” A hero.
A Song for the Unsung
We can learn about Bayard Rustin in “A Song for the Unsung” by Carole Boston Weatherford and Rob Sanders, illustrated by Byron McCray (Henry Holt, 2022; $19.99). Bayard Rustin was a major player in organizing the 1963 March on Washington. He had a long history in the Civil Rights Movement. “ … he refused to give up his seat on a bus and was beaten and arrested ….he refused to fight in World War II or to support the war; Bayard was sent to prison for more than two years.” Out of prison he continued to protest against segregated buses and was again beaten.
When Civil Rights leader A. Philip Randolph began to organize the 1963 March, he asked Bayard to help him. “Bayard worked long hours to make sure every last detail of the march was planned.” He wrote fundraising letters, helped create posters, scheduled transportation, organized volunteers, engaged speakers and singers, even supervised preparing 80,000 box lunches.
The authors tell us that 40,000 had gathered on the mall by 9 a.m., 90,000 by 10:30, “ … until 250,000 stood beneath the blazing summer sun.” And then the march, “Led by Dr. King, the march began around noon. With him walked men and women, young and old, Black and white rich and poor.”
But few people know Bayard Rustin’s name. And that is because he was a gay man at a time when that would be enough for people to be shunned, lose their jobs, their reputation.
The authors tell us, that the march led to the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination. “ quiet man orchestrated it all./A man behind a movement./An unsung hero./A gay Africa American./Bayard Rustin./Finally, a song for you.”
A Crown of Stories: The Life and Language of Beloved Writer Toni Morrison
Carole Boston Weatherford has given us another hero in “A Crown of Stories: The Life and Language of Beloved Writer Toni Morrison” (illustrated by Khalif Tahir Thompson; Quill Tree Books, 2024; $19.99). Toni Morrison was born in Ohio, named Chloe Ardelia Wofford, in a family that moved north in the Great Migration. Her family was filled with storytellers and Chloe loved stories and the sounds of words. She was the first in first grade to learn to read. Her father worked two, even three jobs but the family was poor, and Chloe gathered “bits of coal that have fallen from freight cars/ to heat (their) home in the dead of winter.” The family moved frequently because they could not afford to pay the rent. Still, Chloe goes to college, the first in her family. When a student mistakenly calls her Toni, she adopts that name.
Impressed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Morrison decides “to write about and for Black people. /In the freedom struggle, a pen will be your sword.” A college professor, an editor, and most importantly a writer. Toni Morrison penned American classics. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. Carole Boston Weatherford has told us of a hero who gave us unforgettable stories, characters who live always in our minds. The book is written as if a letter to Toni Morrison and draws us in to the correspondence.
Jimmy’s Rhythm & Blues The Extraordinary Life
A final hero is also a writer — James Baldwin. “Jimmy’s Rhythm & Blues: The Extraordinary Life of James Baldwin,” written by Michelle Meadows and illustrated by Jamiel Law (Harper, 2024; $19.99). As a child growing up in Harlem Jimmy Baldwin loved books. “He read everything and everywhere.” His father was a preacher and a “harsh, rigid man” and wanted him to read only the Bible. His mother “smiled at Jimmy, protected him, and showed him love.” The family had little money and Jimmy, and his siblings had to scrounge for old bread. Once he was stopped by white police officers, who “searched him in an empty lot and left him on the ground.”
He read and he wrote. “Whether he felt frightened, lonely, said, or worried, Jimmy let his emotions pout from his pen.” At school he wrote songs, poems, plays, and stories. And he determined he would be a writer when he grew up.
As an adult, “ … he saw writing as his special gift — a calling to capture the voice of his ancestors, stand up for oppressed people, and push the world to change …. Writing helped him discover true power: /the power of his mind,/the power of his words,/ and the power of his stories.” He moved to Greenwich Village and worked on his first book. When the book was turned down, he moved to Paris. In Paris he wrote, he found freedom from discrimination, he found a love — Lucien Happersberger, a painter. He finished his book and mailed it off to New York. In 1953 it was published — “Go Tell It on the Mountain.”
He wrote many more books, “ … became a leading voice of the civil rights movement, writing and speaking eloquently about the fight for freedom.” Meadows concludes: “From the streets of Harlem/to his travels all around the world,/ Jimmy shared his rhythm and blues;/with compassion in his heart and a pen in his hand,/ James Baldwin touched lives and changed the world.”
The end papers of this wonderful book show us a collage of photographs of James Baldwin smiling, speaking, resting, reading. They, too, bring us into Baldwin’s life and show us again he was a hero for us all.
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