Bravo! Poems About Amazing Hispanics

Eighteen Hispanic individuals from diverse professional and personal backgrounds are honored in Engle’s plainspoken free-verse poems, written from each person’s perspective. “I struggled to become a teacher/ and a poet, so I could use words/ to fight for equal rights for women,” explains Puerto Rican activist Julia de Burgos, while George Meléndez Wright, the first chief of the National Park Service’s wildlife division, speaks to his environmental passions: “Let us save rare species/ before it is too late!” López (who illustrated Engle’s Dream Drum Girl) creates bold, dramatic portraits of the subjects, which include José Martí, Pura Belpré, Tito Puente, and César Chávez. Capsule biographies are a welcome supplement to the poems, which don’t always fully contextualize the figures on their own. A Spanish-language edition is available simultaneously. Ages 8–12. Author’s agent: Michelle Humphrey, Martha Kaplan Agency. Illustrator’s agency: Full Circle Literary. (Mar.)