Parr, Ann. Gordon Parks, No Excuses [Photographs by Gordon Parks]. Gretna: Pelican Publishing Company, 2006. biography

Gordon Parks, No Excuses is a large-sized book written for grades 3-6. Gordon Parks was a talented African American photographer who grew up in the era of segregation. But he was hardly one dimensional. He was a self-taught painter, a movie maker and a music composer. Children will find this biography fascinating and inspirational; since Parks proved that “what a white boy could do, he could too—with no excuses” (what his mother told him when he was young). The book is full of his black-and-white photographs taken by Parks. They include photos of poor black families in Harlem, with fathers looking for work, Malcom X, poverty in the Catacumb slums of Brazil, and pictures of Parks himself. Many of the pictures were taken during Park’s 25-year-career with Life magazine. Each page has a short explanatory caption, but the bulk of the book’s content found the actual photos. Although it is an excellent book, small children will probably not find the black-and-white images very appealing. The book would be much more fitting for 8th and 9th graders) a more mature audience), especially if they are studying the civil rights era.