If you had seen Elva in the 1950s or early 1960s, you would have seen a poor Mexican American girl walking barefoot along a dusty road in southern Texas or picking beans with her family in green fields in Minnesota. Her family followed the ripening of crops, north in the summer, south in the winter. Despite the constant changing of schools, encouraged by her father, Elva studied and read and eventually surprised teachers with her mathematical skill. Barefoot Heart is the story of how she rose from her underprivileged childhood to earn a masters degree in computer science and engineering from Stanford and become a computer analyst for IBM.
I recommend Barefoot Heart to students needing biographies and adults looking for interesting books. I see in our shared catalogue that some libraries include it in their teen collections. My library is promoting biographies in its adult summer reading program, and I will put the book on display.
Hart, Elva Trevino. Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child. Tempe, Arizona: Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingue, 1999. ISBN 0927534819
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1 comment:
Barefoot Heart is inspiriational and proves that you can be anything no matter what your background or race or childhood.
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