Reviews for Clarence Thomas: Fighter with Words

The average rating for Clarence Thomas: Fighter with Words based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-01-30 00:00:00 James Lawson Lovely book. This is a simple telling of a big life. It makes me want to know more about this woman and what really made her tick. Ntozake uses poetry to tell his story. The artwork is also stunning. It feels overly simply and it it meant for young children K-3rd grade. It starts out with Coretta having to walk 5 miles to get to her school while the white kids had a bus. The injustice pops. The kids were into this story. They have had several books on MLK so they put these two together quickly. I saw people rave about Kadir Nelson and I might need to check out more by her.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-06-23 00:00:00 Pedulla Man Pictures by award-winning illustrator Kadir Nelson. Text by poet Ntozake Shange. Excellence. I anticipated excellence. But perhaps poets are not the best authors of picture books. I had trouble following the text and I'm a grownup. I had to think too much about the words on the page and it wasn't because they were so rich but because the writing wandered around so much. I'd hoped for powerful words, but I found them to be wobbly. The children thought the pictures were very realistic. They were moved by the story of Coretta walking to school. The writing was a little too abstract for many of them and they weren't clear in places about what the writer was trying to say. The poetic writing, with its whimsical sentence structure, was unclear to them. Nevertheless, they loved the sounds of the words and the beautiful pictures. They liked the pictures so much that they forgave the text for not serving them well and gave the book a high rating. A Sample: "white school bus left a funnel of dust on their faces but songs and birds of all colors and rich soil where slaves fought freedom steadied them in the face of danger" Children's Comments: Jayla, 5, said, "I liked the pictures." Silvana, 6, said, "I liked how she changed the laws." Abby, 5, said, "I liked them praying." Gage, 6, said, "I liked the part where they had to walk five miles to school." Jimmy, 6, said, "I liked the people gathering together in the book." Children's Ratings: 5, 1, 5, 5, 1, 5, 5, 5, 5