Clemente!

Title: Clemente!
Author: Willie Perdomo
Illustrator: Bryan Collier
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company, New York

Summary: Clemente! is the story about how a young boy got his name Clemente from famous baseball player Roberto Clemente.  The story has different family members tell the young boy about Roberto, his baseball stats, what a great player he was, and how he was a great father.  The young boys mother also shares with the boy about how Roberto had died in a plane crash, and how everyone had hoped and wished for his safe return but the plane crash had taken his life.  At the end of the story his mother tells the boy that while Roberto was a great baseball player, that he also was a man who knew what respect, faith, hope and belief in yourself were.  Roberto was able to fight for what he knew was right and to believe in himself even when others were trying to bring him down, and that was why they named him Clemente.  

The story is great because at first you are thinking that the young boy was named after this great baseball player because of his amazing batting average, all of his golden gloves, and his great winning record but in the end it was because of his morals, and the person that he was with and without baseball.  It allowed the reader the chance to look at Roberto Clemente from another angle, the angle of being a real person and not just this famous athlete. 

The story had amazing illustrations! The way the illustrations were able to get the emotion of the story across was fantastic.  As I was reading the story I found myself reading the story out loud and reading in the tone that went along with the colors and the feelings that the illustrations were making me feel.  

I also really liked how the book had both Spanish and English within the book, but what I liked most was that it was intertwined so effortlessly.  As a person who does not speak Spanish I was able to read along with the book, and could tell from the pictures and the other context clues what I was reading in Spanish.