Cesar Chavez
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\ Children's Literature\ - Joyce Rice\ Decades ago, the author John Steinbeck gave readers a glimpse into the lives of migrant workers through his novel Grapes of Wrath. He wrote about people who made their living traveling from place to place harvesting crops. These workers had no permanent home and only worked at the whim of the weather and the farm owner. They lived in shoddy houses, worked long hours, and often got cheated out of their payment. Cesar Chavez was a champion of these people. Arizona-born Chavez was an American, but he always identified with the plight of the Mexican people. Cesar's mother was a religious woman and believed in a nonviolent way of dealing with problems. She taught Cesar the nonviolent methods that he would later use to present the plight of the migrant worker. When the family farm was sold to the highest bidder because Cesar's family could not make the payments, Cesar became a part of the migrant workers plight. Cesar came into adulthood working as a migrant farmhand. Because they moved around from harvest to harvest, going to school proved difficult. Cesar attended more than thirty elementary schools, but he never gave up on getting an education. After serving in the military, Cesar returned to California, got married, and began his activist work for migrant farm workers. This volume is presented to the middle school reader as a resource for reports, providing websites, source notes, a timeline, and a bibliography. This is a recommended title for middle school biography collections.\ \
