Thursday, January 5, 2023

Holding Her Own by Traci N. Todd and Shannon Wright - ADVISABLE

Holding Her Own
by Traci N. Todd, pictures by Shannon Wright
. PICTURE BOOK Orchard Books (Scholastic). 2023. $22. 9781338305906 

BUYING ADVISORY: EL (K-3), EL - ADVISABLE 

AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE 

Jackie Ormes had a way with words. She was a storyteller and poet. She got a job with a Chicago newspaper, and they had her covering boxing, but because she was a woman, her stories were in the women's section, rather than on the sports page. But what she really wanted to do was draw. She wrote a comic strip - inspired by the stories she'd read in the paper about Black people fleeing the South, her character Torchy Brown was living that dream. 

Jackie became the first nationally syndicated Black woman cartoonist in the United States. A fascinating story - Ormes was also a civil rights activist . Includes an author's note with photographs of Jackie and some of her original cartoons - including why she was investigated by the FBI (never skip the author's notes - I'm serious!).
Lisa Librarian

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