This book is about Miriam Makeba, a Grammy Award-winning South African singer, and her rise to fame. "Mama Africa" as she's often called raised her voice to expose injustice at many different places. This book is a great learning tool for kids to get a close view of Miriam and her global activism along with her fight for equality. The images are eye-catching and help tell her story through beautiful visuals by Charly Palmer. ( )

Beautiful, moving, sad and deeply inspiring. Miriam Makeba's story is all of those things, and this is a lovely short biography honoring her. I particularly like that the writer is a white woman who lived in South Africa under apartheid and hated it. ( )

Miriam Makeba, an award-winning South African singer, raised her voice to campaign against the brutal segregationist system known as apartheid. This biography offers a glimpse into the life of a woman who believed in the power of song and would stop at nothing to fight for equality for all people of South Africa. Includes Author’s Note, Bibliography, Further Reading, Timeline, Glossary

This picture book follows the life of Grammy Award-winning Mariam Makeba and how she rose to fame and her life as a social activist. This would be a great book to use in history classes as it talks about the injustices black people were facing at the time. The book also illustrates how Miriam Makeba used her platform to fight for her people no matter the odds so they may have the same treatment as their white counterparts. ( )

The life of South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba is explored in this beautiful picture-book, which follows its subject from her younger days to her return to her homeland after many years of exile. In between are her experiences growing up under the Apartheid system, her involvement both in the world of music and in that of political activism, her escape from her country and her use of music and performance to draw global attention to the racist oppression being suffered by her countrymen back home. The book also discusses Makeba's involvement in the American Civil Rights Movement, and it closes with an extensive afterword explaining American author Kathryn Erskine's connection to South Africa, as well as a bibliography, list of further reading, detailed timeline and glossary...

In looking through other reviews for Mama Africa!: How Miriam Makeba Spread Hope with Her Song (probably a mistake), I notice that one area of concern with the book, (and in some cases, condemnation of it) is that Erskine is a white American author writing about a black South African woman. Not being an essentialist myself, this didn't bother me, and unlike some other readers I wasn't put off by the afterword about Erskine and her time in South Africa as a child. Often times, personal connection gives greater meaning to a story, and reading that section reminded me of my own childhood experiences, and the year that my minister father had an assistant pastor from South Africa. The time I spent with "Uncle Otto," as we children called him, was revelatory, and in later years, when I participated in the divestment movement, the memory of his experiences as a black man in South Africa helped to strengthen my resolve not to buy from certain companies. In any case, while I found the section on Erskine's experiences as an American briefly living in South Africa quite interesting, and in no way problematic in its own right, I do agree with the critics, insofar as I think it was the wrong choice to include that section on Erskine, but not to devote a section first to Makeba herself. Many picture-book biographies, particularly those illustrated with artwork rather than photographs, will do this, providing more information on their subject. There was a detailed timeline, but I would have also liked to see some photographs of Makeba (there are many), and some more details about her life.

Leaving aside these issues of authorship and identity, I did find Mama Africa!: How Miriam Makeba Spread Hope with Her Song informative, and I appreciated how it addressed the brutality of Apartheid - in one incident, a friend of Makeba's dies by the roadside, because the ambulance that comes to the site of their car accident is only for white people - while also focusing on the hope that Makeba and her music brought to so many. The accompanying artwork from Charly Palmer, an African-American fine artist who appears to have worked on only a few picture-books, is boldly colorful and expressive. Recommended to picture-book readers who enjoy biography, or who are looking for stories about racism, Apartheid, South Africa, and/or musicians. ( )