Overview
A little boy named Clemente learns about his namesake, the great baseball player Roberto Clemente, in this joyful picture book biography.
Born in Puerto Rico, Roberto Clemente was the first Latin American player to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and the only player for whom the five-year initiation period was waived. Known not only for his exceptional baseball skills but also for his extensive charity work in Latin America, Clemente was well-loved during his eighteen years playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He died in a plane crash while bringing aid supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua.
Willie Perdomo's rhythmic text and Bryan Collier's energetic art combine to tell the amazing story of one of baseball's greats.
Clemente! is a 2011 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.
Synopsis
A little boy named Clemente learns about his namesake, the great baseball player Roberto Clemente, in this joyful picture book biography.
Born in Puerto Rico, Roberto Clemente was the first Latin American player to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and the only player for whom the five-year initiation period was waived. Known not only for his exceptional baseball skills but also for his extensive charity work in Latin America, Clemente was well-loved during his eighteen years playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He died in a plane crash while bringing aid supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua.
Willie Perdomo's rhythmic text and Bryan Collier's energetic art combine to tell the amazing story of one of baseball's greats.
Publishers Weekly
The joy of hero worship is on full display in this tribute to “Puerto Rican prince” Roberto Clemente, the first Latin American Hall of Famer, who died in 1972 while flying on a humanitarian mission to Nicaragua. The young narrator, named Clemente by his diehard fan father (“ask him why he thinks that the number 21 should be retired forever”), knows “all the stats, and I can tell you todo, everything” about Clemente. And if he forgets something, another family fan, his mother, “jumps in and reminds us that he was a good father and a good son,” who “nunca abandonó su sueño” of a better and more just world. Perdomo (previously paired with Collier on Visiting Langston) strikes just the right note of precocious breathlessness, punctuating his text with Spanish to convey a people’s enormous pride in one of their own (“Clemente! Clemente! It’s us, ¡tu gente! Clemente! Clemente! Prince of the baseball diamante!”). Collier’s watercolor and collage pictures have a burnished look worthy of a heartfelt hagiography while at the same time evoking the dynamism of a genuine superstar athlete. Ages 6-up. (May)