Who Was the Voice of the People?: Cesar Chavez

Gr 4-6–Highlighting Cesar Chavez’s leadership ability and his commitment to nonviolent protest, this account of the 1966 Delano Grape Strikers’ 340-mile march to Sacramento alternates neatly framed comic panels with prose passages that fill in biographical and historical background. Depicting major figures in the march—Chavez; the official leader, Roberto Bustos; and the National Farm Workers Association’s incomparable cofounder Dolores Huerta—with reasonable fidelity, Julia gives them a calm resolve in the face of hostile law enforcement officers and other obstacles that will stir readers. The dialogue does tend to run to slogans and pronouncements, so Kathleen Krull’s Harvesting Hope is a more well-written and detailed account of the topic. Still, this is a viable alternative for its visual approach and more current resource list.