Bill Pickett: Rodeo-Ridin' Cowboy

by Andrea Davis Pinkney, Brian Pinkney (Illustrator)

Overview

The true sweat-and-dirt tale of the feisty cowboy-child who became the most famous black rodeo performer who ever lived. Includes a note about the history of the black West and a bibliography.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780152021030
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	10/04/1999
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	9.00(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.10(d)
Lexile:	AD1000L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 7 Years

About the Author

Andrea Davis Pinkney is the New York Times best-selling author of several books for young readers, including the novel Bird in a Box, a Today Show Al Roker Book Club for Kids pick, and Hand in Hand: Ten Black Men Who Changed America, winner of the Coretta Scott King Author Award. Additional works include the Caldecott Honor and Coretta Scott King Honor book Duke Ellington, illustrated by her husband, Brian Pinkney; and Let It Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters, a Coretta Scott King Honor book and winner of the Carter G. Woodson Award. Andrea Davis Pinkney lives in New York City.

Brian Pinkney is a celebrated picture-book illustrator who has won two Caldecott Honors. His professional recognition includes the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award and three Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honors. He has collaborated with his wife, author Andrea Davis Pinkney, on several picture books including Duke Ellington: The Piano Prince and His Orchestra and Sleeping Cutie. The Pinkneys live in Brooklyn, New York.

Editorial Reviews

[A] rip-snorting picture-book biography.”—Kirkus Reviews
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From the Publisher

From the creators of Dear Benjamin Banneker (1994), rip-snorting picture-book biography of the first African-American cowboy inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. Pickett, "quick as a jackrabbit, more wide-eyed than a hooty owl," left home at 15, having already invented his famous bulldogging technique—controlling balky cattle by gripping their lips with his teeth and twisting. As a "wild-riding South Texas brushpopper," he quickly earned a reputation working both ranches and the rodeo circuit, putting on shows from Mexico City to London, and making steer-wrestling the standard rodeo event it is today. Based on both published sources and interviews with one of Pickett's descendants (and with an afterword called "More About Black Cowboys"), this covers the essentials of his career while casting Pickett in the mold of a folk hero. Although readers may be disappointed to see only one scene of Pickett performing his spectacularly gross trick (sinking his teeth into the lips of a steer), the swirling lines and brushstrokes of the scratchboard illustrations ably second the text's energy and vivid imagery.

Kirkus Reviews