Selena Perez

School Library Journal

Gr 2-3-A biography of the popular Tejano singer for beginning readers. Each two-page spread contains a minichapter about Perez opposite a full-page, full-color photograph. The earliest photos are of her teenage years. The short text gives the bare bones of her brief life, tracing her family's singing tradition through the posthumous release of her pop crossover hit, "Dreaming of You." However, there's no real sense of her as a person. Her murder is handled in a matter-of-fact way with no sensationalism. The print is large and the book is peppered with highlighted words and their pronunciations in parentheses. It is not great biography, but it will be checked out because of interest in Selena.-Jane Claes, T. J. Lee Elementary School, Irving, TX