Catherine Deeter's paintings accompany this celebration of poet Langston Hughes' life, which reads like fiction as it surveys the influences on Hughes' career and the motivations behind his writings and life. An excellent picturebook biography, this requires reading skills but will appeal to grades 2-4.

This book purports to describe the lives of Guatemalan street children. The author interviewed four women in their late teens and early twenties who were at the time living in a home for single women with children. The women related their histories of life on the street. During the interviews the author interjected with questions about their experiences of violence. Most children "of the street", that is, those who live as well as work on the street are boys, and boys are more likely to feel the brunt of the violence. Therefore, the interviews didn't address the central question of the book - how street children experience brutality in their lives. The book's focus on violence against the children depicted the children as passive victims, and omitted the resourcefulness and ingenuity the youth show in finding food, shelter, and friendship on the streets. Two chapters of this book are worth reading. One chapter documents incidents of violence against street children in Guatemala in the years 1989-1994. The other analyzes the depiction of street children in the Guatemalan press. For a vivid and thorough description of the lives of street children in Latin America, read another source such as Lewis Aptekar's Street Children of Cali.