Booklist Review

Gr. 3-5. With brightly colored cover photos, these two upbeat paperbacks in the Bullseye Biography series will attract a variety of readers. The writing is simple, with short sentences; and the design is spacious, with large type and lots of black-and-white photos throughout. Though the reading level is about a grade three, the information is quite sophisticated, and reluctant teenage readers will find these life stories of interest. The tone is adulatory (Katz has exclamation points on nearly every page), but Angelou and Mandela are extraordinary people, and these biographies give a strong sense of their personal, political, and professional lives. The Angelou book draws on her adult autobiographies, especially I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970), and describes her distinguished career as a writer and a civil rights activist. Mandela's story is also an account of the apartheid system and the long struggle against it; the book ends with his recent triumphant election as president of a multiracial democratic state. These are people in the news, and kids will want to read about them, for personal interest and for that ubiquitous biography assignment. Other titles in the series include Meet Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, listed in the Series Roundup in this issue. --Hazel Rochman