Pettit's honest account of childhood rape and its troubling consequences is one of the strongest elements of this short account of a complex life. The jacket painting of the adolescent Maya will attract readers. Four center pages of black-and-white photographs provide images of Angelou as an adult. The book is a useful introduction with a chronology and endnotes. Bib., ind.

In this dull entry in the Rainbow Biography series, Pettit (A Time to Fight Back, 1996, etc.) sets out to tell the story of a ``remarkable woman who has survived the pain of abandonment, the anguish of child abuse, and the hatred of racial intolerance.'' The abandonment, abuse, and hatred are dutifully chronicled from the time the girl who would become Maya, age three, and her four-year- old brother are shipped off to live in Stamps, Arkansas—Klan country—to her rape in St. Louis at age eight by her mother's boyfriend, date rape, teen pregnancy, and two marriages. Angelou becomes a poet, performer, and civil rights activist and, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, turns her harsh early life into art. Incredibly, not a word of her poetry or prose appears in this perfunctory rendering. (Biography. 8-11)"

Gr 5-8--This interestingly told account begins on the steps of the Capitol Building in 1993, as Angelou recites her inaugural poem, "On the Pulse of the Morning." Drawn from her subject's autobiographies, Pettit then details the childhood journeys of Marguerite Johnson and her brother from California to their grandmother's home in Stamps, AR; to their mother's hometown of St. Louis, MO; back to Stamps; and then, following their mother's remarriage, to San Francisco. During these first 17 years of Angelou's life (which account for half of the text), readers learn of her rape at age 8 and the subsequent murder of her assailant, her ensuing silence, and her teenage pregnancy and single motherhood. These events are told in a straightforward but compassionate way. The rest of the book is devoted to Angelou's professional development and achievements, as well as her personal relationships. The final chapter summarizes the past 30 years. Disappointingly, only a handful of black-and-white photographs are included. Nonetheless, this is a short, readable biography.--Marilyn Makowski, Greenwood High School, SC