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RAY ANTHONY SHEPARD

[Nilda] is a sensitive, well written and powerful story of a 10-year-old girl's growth into adolescence. Nilda is on her own because no one else survives. She must not only grow into adolescence, but she must learn what it means to be Puerto Rican and poor in America…. [She] must come to grips with a poverty that kills her step-father and eventually her mother….

At times the odds against Nilda, or any child, seem overpowering. At the end of four years her survival is still in doubt; one hopes she survives because as a reader one is so involved in her life, but even as the novel closes one can not be sure.

This is an outstanding first novel…. (p. 230)

Ray Anthony Shepard, in Children's Literature: Annual of The Modern Language Association Seminar on Children's Literature and The Children's Literature Association, Vol. 3, edited by Francelia Butler (© 1974 by Francelia Butler; all rights...

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1. Introduction
2. Marilyn Sachs
3. Mary M. Burns
4. Ray Anthony Shepard
5. Marilyn Sachs
6. Paul Heins
7. Irma Garcia
8. GEORGESS McHARGUE
9. Zena Sutherland
10. Alleen Pace Nilsen
11. Miguel A. Ortiz
12. Copyright