Available:*
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Author Notes
Author Jim Haskins was born in Demopolis, Alabama on September 19, 1941. He received a B.A. from Georgetown University in 1960, a B.S. from Alabama State University in 1962, and a M.A. from the University of New Mexico in 1963. After graduation, he became a special education teacher in a public school in Harlem. His first book, Diary of a Harlem School Teacher, was the result of his experience there. He taught at numerous colleges and universities before becoming an English professor at the University of Florida, Gainesville in 1977.
He wrote more than 100 books during his lifetime, ranging from counting books for children to biographies on Rosa Parks, Hank Aaron and Spike Lee. He won numerous awards for his work including the 1976 Coretta Scott King Award for The Story of Stevie Wonder, the 1984 Coretta Scott King Award for Lena Horne, the 1979 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for Scott Joplin: The Man Who Made Ragtime; and the 1994 Washington Post Children's Book Guide Award. He also won the Carter G. Woodson Award for young adult non-fiction for Black Music in America; The March on Washington; and Carter G. Woodson: The Man Who Put "Black" in American History in 1989, 1994, and 2001, respectively. He died from complications of emphysema on July 6, 2005 at the age of 63.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (1)
Kirkus Review
Is Diana Ross all packaging? That's what critics have said of her act, and Haskins' uncritical but not gushy biography may inadvertently confirm the suspicion. With a little time off to return to charm school for further polishing, Ross spent the militant Sixties under Motown's Berry Gordy's total direction, working hard on success as lead Supreme. In the early Seventies she married and had three unplanned children in rapid succession, but finally gave up the marriage and her sporadic attempts to stay home with the kids. She threw a temper tantrum over the tacky clothes she had to wear in Lady Sings the Blues, insisted on designing her own for Mahogany, which was less favorably received, and had to sit home pregnant through the premiere of Lady. . . , thus missing ""the biggest moment of her life."" Now in her thirties, Diana Ross is attempting to project a more natural image, but seems largely reduced to looking back with understandable pride on her early and rapid rise from the Detroit projects. That dream of course still lives; and where Diana Ross still embodies it, Haskins' biography will satisfy at a level a few steps up from fan fodder. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.