Richie's Picks: Great Books for Children and Young Adults

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"You think the world was shocked when Nixon resigned?
Wait till I whup George Forman's behind.

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,
His hands can't hit what his eyes can't see.
Now you see me, now you don't,
George thinks he will, but I know he won't.

I done wrassled with an alligator,
I done tussled with a whale,
Only last week I murdered a rock,
Injured a stone, hospitalized a brick,
I'm so mean I make medicine sick."
-- Muhammad Ali (as quoted in TWELVE ROUNDS TO GLORY)

Back in June, when the American Library Association was meeting in Washington, D.C., I had the opportunity to spend some quality time over in the National Portrait Gallery. After immersing myself in historical portraits for hours, blissfully wandering through dozens of rooms, alcoves and hallways, I had the good fortune to encounter an amazing exhibit titled "Being There," which showcased more than one hundred unforgettable photographs by Harry Benson. It was like looking at a visual soundtrack of the world I've experienced through the media over my five decades of life on Earth.

While there were a number of photos in the exhibit with which I was quite familiar, one that I could not believe I'd never seen before has Muhammad Ali with his boxing gloves laced up, clowning with the Beatles when they visited his training camp in 1964.

It was so fascinating to see John Lennon and Muhammad Ali together in a photo like that, one that was taken in the era when I first got to see each of them on television, a sweet, innocent time for me despite the recent Presidential assassination having shaken my childhood.

"I ain't got no quarrel with the VietCong. No VietCong ever called me nigger."
-- Muhammad Ali

"If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace."
-- John Lennon

It would be these two larger-than-life figures, two of the most famous people in world that I've lived through, two men I idolized from the early Sixties onward, who would change my life and my outlook on everything I'd previous thought, when each spoke out so passionately during my young adolescent years against the Vietnam War.

TWELVE ROUNDS TO GLORY is a visual and textual celebration of the life and times of a great American hero. Amidst the recounting of his legendary boxing career -- bout-by-memorable-bout -- we see how Ali's legacy as a man of conscience, an antiwar spokesman whose words echoed the world over, became one of the pivotal aspects of his life. The other legacy, also portrayed so vividly here, is of Ali's desire to help those in need, and his need to eventually go back into the ring at an age when he shouldn't have done so in order to earn huge paychecks that could be used to finance care for the underprivileged in America. It is so sad to contemplate how Ali might be in far better shape today if he'd not felt it necessary to put his physical well-being, his mortal body, on the line for the sake of others.

Woven into TWELVE ROUNDS OF GLORY are significant chapters of the story of the America of my own lifetime:

"Admired and loved
by your Olympic peers,
you soon returned home
to parades of wild cheers
that greeted you
as you stepped off the plane
with hundreds of people
all chanting your name:
'Ca-shus,
Ca-shus,
' they roared across Louisville.
But the welcome was short
because away from the sport
the country you fought for still
put people, like laundry,
in two separate piles,
and forced you, a black man, to deal
with hate-filled words
spit into your ear,
like, 'I don't care who you are,
boy; get out of here!'
With anger and hate directed at you
they tried to sucker-punch your pretty brown face.
But anger and hate, thrown like weak jabs,
couldn't knock out
a prince of black race.
Sparking fire inside,
fanning flames of black pride,
fanning flames of courage
and heart you would ride
while blazing your path
as you turned pro,
you burned with a fire
that set you aglow.
Fighting opponents and hatred
with two glowing gloves,
you spoke your mind freely
while radiating love.
A black prince perched
on the precipice of fame,
young Cassius, the world
would soon chant your name."

Illustrator Bryan Collier -- who is a champion in his own right with repeated Caldecott and Coretta Scott King award recognition -- has created watercolor-and-collage images that often have the larger-than-life Ali busting right out of the pages. Large blocky text quotes and sounds from the ring dance through the pages, peppering the verses of text and providing balance to the paintings.

"If God's with me, can't nobody be against me!"
-- Cassius Clay

TWELVE ROUNDS TO GLORY is one of those joyful noise books: it didn't matter a bit that I was sitting here alone (not counting the old dog downstairs). I just couldn't help but to read the whole book cover to cover, aloud and loudly, getting into the groove of the rhythm and the rhyme of the verse.

"THWACK!"

Richie Partington, MLIS
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