Sonia Sotomayor

According to the book jacket, Sonia Sotomayor is a Children's Book-of-the-Month Featured Selection, and and also an Alternate Selection of Mosaico. Despite these honors and the book's illustrious subject, I found the writing slightly disappointing. Jonah Winter's "familiar" style and does not fit

Show More

with the lofty story of this hard-working justice from the Bronx,

"She was also known for having no patience for lawyers who weren't prepared - you better not mess with Judge Sonia! Yet she was known for much more than this."

I can't speak as to how the book flows in its Spanish translation.

I did however, enjoy the overall comaprison of Sonia Sotomayor with a tenacious vine that thrives and blooms with care and hard work. The artwork is soft and simple, and accurately portrays Sotomayor's Latina heritage. This is a perfect choice for Women's History Month.

Show Less

This book about Sonia Sotomayor could be very inspiring to both English speaking and Spanish speaking students. It describes the hard work that Sonia and her mother went through during her journey to become a Supreme Court Justice. The book is billingual and written by Edel Rodrigueq and Jonah

Show More

Winter and illustrated by Edel Rodriguez. This story could be used to show that sometimes the American Dream can come true through hard work and drive. I think it would be fun to talk with students afterwards to discuss why a Latina hadn't been a justice prior to her and what her job is and if people are not as opposed to her now that she has spent sometime on the Bench. I would think this book would be appropriate for 3-5 graders.

Show Less

A good bilingual introduction to the supreme court justice.

I really like the biography of Sonia Sotomayor for two reasons. First of all, it has the text in both English and Spanish, which is wonderful both for people who speak both languages, or for those who would just like to see the other language. I actually compared several of the sentences and made

Show More

the connections between the languages, which was really neat. I also appreciate that this is a great multicultural book, as it describes a young Latina girl who beat the odds and became a judge on the Supreme Court, where most of the other faces were white and male. Additionally, I thought it was really cool to see President Barack Obama portrayed in this book! I think the overall message is that it does not matter where you come from or what your background is; the American Dream is for everyone and anyone. Whatever your dream is, hard work can get you there!

Show Less

This book provides a fantastic opportunity for children to hear the story of a girl from the Bronx who makes the most of very little growing up. From the streets to a seat in the highest court in our country, Sonia Sotomayor made all of her dreams come true with the love of her mother a

Show More

determination!

Show Less

This is the tale of Sonia Sotomayor. It starts out with young Sonia and living with her mother and sibling, after her father died. Her mother worked hard to keep them in school and get them educated. Sonia attended college and decided to go into law. She stood up against discrimination of those

Show More

less privileged. The book details events that led up to her being asked to become a Supreme Court Justice by Obama.

Show Less

Social Sciences, BI, Sotomayor, Supreme Court, American History, Latino American, Latino, Latina, Hispanic, Judicial System

Each double-page spread of this book has text both in English and in Spanish. The book tells the story of our first Latin-American Supreme Court justice from the time she was a little girl.

As we learn in an Author’s Note at the end of the book (also both in English and in Spanish), Sonia Maria

Show More

Sotomayor was born on June 25, 1954 to Puerto Rican parents in the South Bronx section of New York City.

When young, Sonia loved Nancy Drew mysteries, but because she got diabetes when she was eight, she figured she could not be a detective herself, but maybe she could be a judge, just like in her favorite television show, “Perry Mason.”

She studied hard, and got into Princeton. There she graduated with the highest honors of her class. Oddly, the author then skips the fact that Sonia went on to law school. (She received her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1979, where she was an editor at the Yale Law Journal.) Instead, the story takes us immediately from Princeton to her career as a judge.

The author reports that Sonia was a special judge because of her first-hand understanding of poverty and prejudice. Then, the next thing you know in the book, President Obama is inviting her to the White House and nominating her to the Supreme Court. She faced days of tough questions from senators, but she made it:

“Nothing could stop Sonia, the dynamo from the Bronx, from making history as the nation’s first Latin-American Supreme Court justice. . . . "

Cuban-born illustrator Edel Rodriguez uses mixed-media illustrations with ink and watercolors in a soft palette. Readers may be more familiar with Rodriguez than they think; he was the artist responsible for the iconic cover of Der Speigel magazine on February 4, 2017.

Evaluation: Most of the prose is fairly trite, and as noted above, leaves some odd gaps in Sotomayor’s story. While there is some additional information about Sotomayor’s career in an Author’s Note at the end of the book, it too is incomplete, and pretty much omits why her legal career garnered national attention. Still, it may inspire kids to try to find out more on their own.

Show Less