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Summary
Summary
Once a boyhood dream, now a people's hope The weight of history hangs on Joe's shoulders
On the eve of World War II, African American boxer Joe Louis fought German Max Schmeling in a bout that had more at stake then just the world heavyweight title; for much of America their fight came to represent the country's war with Germany.
From Caldecott Honor winner Kadir Nelson and acclaimed novelist Matt de la Pena, this elegant and powerful picture book biography centers around the historic fight in which Black and White America were able to put aside prejudice and come together to celebrate our nation's ideals.
Author Notes
Matt de la Peña received a BA from the University of the Pacific and a MFA in creative writing from San Diego State University. He is a children's book author who specializes in novels for young adults. His books include Ball Don't Lie, Mexican WhiteBoy, We Were Here, I Will Save You, A Nation's Hope: The Story of Boxing Legend Joe Louis, and Infinity Ring. He won the 2016 Newbery Medal for Last Stop on Market Street.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Nelson's (Mama Miti) photographically realistic, luminescent oil paintings bring to life this lyrical tribute to boxing legend Joe Louis. Focusing on Louis's 1938 rematch against German Max Schmeling, "Son of a black sharecropper/ against Hitler's master race,' " de la Pena (We Were Here), in his first picture book, shows how the event unified a racially divided country for one evening, "white men hugging black men/ and black men hugging back." The story of the fight bookends a biography of Louis. Spare, evocative verse melds with the eloquent illustrations to create palpable energy around the fight and Louis's struggle to the top. "Black neighborhoods,/ longing for a hero to call their own, found Joe,/ and danced his every triumph in the streets." The accompanying spread shows fans cheering from rooftops and windows as Joe and his wife walk down a Harlem sidewalk. Another stunning scene features a closeup of two pairs of entangled red boxing gloves, with Louis's copper muscles bulging as he helps a white opponent to his feet. A dramatic introduction to a pugilist who symbolized many things for an entire country. Ages 6-8. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
It's 1938, and the atmosphere at Yankee Stadium is electric -- with good reason: heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis is squaring off against Max Schmeling. On the eve of World War II, the rematch against the formidable German, the only man who has knocked Louis down, is a matter of national pride. Americans, regardless of color, support Louis and oppose Schmeling, a symbol of the troubling policies of the Nazi regime. At the height of the suspense, de la Pena's free-verse narrative flashes back to Louis's childhood and early career right up to the point where Schmeling wins their first fight, but in the second fight (two years after the first, a fact the text doesn't mention), Schmeling is no match for Louis, and with the victory 'the streets of Harlem once again dance for their hero.' Nelson vividly captures not only the drama of the fight scenes but also the entire nation waiting with bated breath and quickened pulse. His oil paintings, with their impassioned but regal quality, are an excellent counterpart for Joe Louis and this historic sporting event. JONATHAN HUNT (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Sometimes a boxing match is just that, a sport played out on the fists and jaws of two determined contenders. But sometimes it is so much more, as in the 1938 bout between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling. This spectacularly illustrated, smoothly cadenced picture book sets up the historic fight Son of a black sharecropper / against Hitler's master race' / Black and white Americans / together against the rule of Nazi hate and then quickly traces Louis' rise from a quiet boy in Jim Crow America to a magnificent fighter and national hero. Nelson, who's incapable of even a mediocre painting, flexes his artistic muscle here, varying his always effective blue-sky-backed, leveled-gaze portraits with dizzying and dramatic angles, both in and out of the ring. The full weight of the fight's import may need some additional historical context for young readers, but the message rings through in any case: that this was a unifying and triumphant moment of national pride, for all Americans, and that sports can capture people's hearts for more reasons than just winning.--Chipman, Ian Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
IF the magazine The Ring were to rank oxymorons, "children's boxing book" would be No. 1 in the heavyweight division. The time has long since passed when fathers and their children - almost always, it's true, their sons - would go to the fights or watch them on television Friday nights, bonding over blood and gore. Now, such pursuits might be deemed child abuse. For a sport once second only to baseball in popularity, it's just another cause of death. Yet here, miraculously, are two boxing-related books for young people: "A Nation's Hope," a superbly illustrated picture book by Matt de la Peña and Kadir Nelson, and "Bird in a Box," a powerful middle-grade novel by Andrea Davis Pinkney. And, in a second swipe at political correctness, each highlights that most unfashionable of figures: Joe Louis. Sports not on life support can accommodate many heroes - Derek Jeter doesn't threaten Babe Ruth or Joe DiMaggio. But boxing has no contemporary claimants, and mired in historic disrepute, it retains few. The plodding, inarticulate and apolitical Joe Louis, unlike the more flamboyant Jack Johnson and Muhammad Ali, has been reduced to a footnote. Except, that is, to anyone (and particularly anyone black) who lived through and remembers Louis's glorious career in the 1930s and '40s, when he electrified the nation, gave hope to an entire race and became the first black athlete to "cross over" to a white fan base. Louis was incontrovertibly one of the key black figures of the 20th century. So it's heartening to discover two books that begin to tell his story and remedy this injustice for the next generation. "Bird in a Box" isn't about Joe Louis per se. Instead, with tenderness and verve, it tells the stories of three 12-year-old black children, Hibernia, Otis and Willie, in Depression-era Elmira, N.Y. Hibernia's mother abandoned her when she was a baby - to sing, she hoped, at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem - leaving the girl to her preacher father. Otis and Willie grow up in the Mercy Home for Negro Orphans: Otis's parents are killed driving their truck, and in a drunken fit, Willie's father sticks Willie's hands in a pot of boiling grits, reducing them to stumps and ending Willie's own dreams of glory in the ring. Inspiring them throughout is Joe Louis. For the three children, as for millions of Americans, Louis's nationally broadcast fights are communal, semireligious events. Pinkney has done her homework, but she occasionally goofs. Louis's promoter, for example, needed no gimmicks to generate interest in him. And blacks never had to donate nickels to prop up his career. Only much later - by which time the book's characters would have been young adults - did he become a charity case. "Bird in a Box" culminates on June 22, 1937, when Louis knocks out the "Cinderella Man," James J. Braddock, to win the heavyweight crown. But Hibernia, Otis and Willie would riave known, as Louis himself knew, that he wasn't really champion yet. That didn't happen until he beat the German boxer Max Schmeling. Their rematch, at Yankee Stadium in 1938, the most widely anticipated sporting event of its era, is the subject of "A Nation's Hope." A picture book is not the place to explore subtleties like Schmeling's ambiguous ties to the Nazis. Besides, that's not how people saw it at the time: this was a struggle of good against evil, with Louis just about the only man willing to take on Hitler. De la Peña's succinct text and Nelson's intensely beautiful paintings don't require much more time than Louis needed for Schmeling. But some 70 years later, the story is no less stirring. "A Nation's Hope": In 1938, most Americans saw Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling as good vs. evil. David Margolick is the author of "Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, and a World on the Brink" and "Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock," to be published in October.
School Library Journal Review
Gr 3-5-Stirring verse and incandescent oil paintings trace Louis's childhood and career, culminating with his historic 1938 matchup against Max Schmeling. Solidly set in Jim Crow America, this story tells how one individual, through courage and determination, transcended long-entrenched social boundaries and united a nation. (Feb.) (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
When Joe Louis fought Max Schmeling at Yankee Stadium in 1938, the bout was for more than the heavyweight title; it was the coming together of Black and White America against Nazi oppression. While in reality neither man was comfortable with such a weight of history on his shoulders, and Schmeling was not a member of the Nazi Party, this work portrays history more single-mindedly. Schmeling is simply "Hitler's German" or "the German," a stereotyped Other, while Louis is "a nation's hope," a symbol all of America rallied around. The story is related in poetic lines with quirky punctuation, an occasional clunky line and an overwrought extended metaphor about shadows: "Devastated, he covered his face leaving the ring / Shadows once again falling and the taste of failure ..." The eye-catching volume features Nelson's oils-on-wood paintings, at their best in close-up portraits and panoramic spreads. The brightly lit boxing ring with the shadows of a nighttime Yankee Stadium all around are breathtaking. No backmatter is included to expand upon a story that seems as perfunctory as the one-round match itself. (Picture book/biography. 6-10)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
