Who Was Roberto Clemente?

Who Was . . . ? Series

by James Buckley Jr., Ted Hammond (Illustrations)

Growing up the youngest of seven children in Puerto Rico, Roberto Clemente had a talent for baseball. His incredible skill soon got him drafted into the big leagues where he spent 18 seasons playing right field for the Pittsburgh Pirates.  Who Was Roberto Clemente?  tells the story of this remarkable a twelve-time All-Star, World Series MVP, and the first Latin American inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Genres: Biography, Sports, Nonfiction, Childrens, Baseball, Biography Memoir, History

112 pages, Paperback

First published September 25, 2014

About the author

In addition to his work as a professional editor, James Buckley, Jr., is also the author of many books on American sports that are geared toward young fans and budding athletes.

Buckley, who has founded a company called Shoreline Publishing Group to produce books for reluctant readers, maintains that sports are far more than simple hobbies or ways to burn off excess energy.

Reviews

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this in Spanish for practice, enjoyed it more than I expected.

[Bebe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Awesome story! Very imformative!!👍👍

[Heidi Burkhart · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't know a thing about Roberto Clemente until I read this book. It is a book written for kids, but I enjoyed it. It was informative, as well as instructive in terms of describing Puerto Rico's relationship to the US as a commonwealth, Clemente's country of birth.

[Shael Menendez · Rating 5 out of 5]

For this book James Buckley Jr. chose Roberto Clemente as his topic/person. Some things he had done were things that affected the world in a positive way! Here are some examples, Roberto was born in Puerto Rico in 1934. He was known as one of the best baseball players to ever live. In 1965 his first son was born . Well in my conclusion I wanted to show that this is an entire background of his life. And if you want to learn more about him I recommend this book.

[Cate · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've always liked baseball, and I've heard Roberto Clemente's name mentioned a lot in the baseball world. He has an award named after him that several notable MLB players have won, such as Yadier Molina, Anthony Rizzo, Clayton Kershaw, and a bunch of other really cool players in baseball.
But I didn't actually know a lot about Roberto Clemente. This book was concise, but it was a really good overview of Clemente's life. His life was very inspiring, especially for baseball players.

[Pumkin pie · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was great. Baseball fans, you would especially like it.

[AMY · Rating 5 out of 5]

106 pages. Very well-written biography about a famous baseball player from Puerto Rico. I learned a lot about him. There were lots of drawings, facts and information throughout the book. There is a timeline and additional resources listed at the end of the book. Great for reports. Highly recommended for sports fans and anyone who likes to learn about inspiring people. Grades 4-5.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Juvenile book but just enough, had new info for me a die hard Pittsburgh sports fan.

[Edward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who was Roberto Clemente is a phenomenal book it tells you all about this amazing baseball player who grew up with a poor family in Puerto Rico. Roberto Clemente is possibly one of the best baseball players to this day. He had to overcome many struggles when he first started playing in the majors, the struggles he had to face were segregation, and people would make fun of his heavy Spanish accent. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone especially baseball fans.

[Nathan Ibanez · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is about Roberto Clemente's life and how he was a legendary baseball player. His life all started in Puerto Rico and then later in his life he plays with the Pittsburg Pirates and then his career lasted very long. This book is for all the baseball people and the people who like sports. This book was really intresting because it shows that anybody can be a great person. This book shows that Roberto's life was intresting but his life ended sadly. Read this legendary book about a legendary baseball player.

[Adi G · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really amazing story about a baseball player!

[Megan Knippenberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just got this book with bonus points from my class's Scholastic book order. This series is amazing in the way in which it makes biographies accessible for kids.

I did not know anything about Roberto Clemente (which speaks to how much I know about baseball), and I was fascinated by his story. As amazing as he was at baseball, he was also humble and desired to give back. One of my favorite quotes of his is the following: ''Any time you have an opportunity to make a difference in this world and you don't, then you are wasting your time on Earth.'' Wow.

Apart from highlighting his commitment to philanthropy, the book also describes moments in which his life was impacted by segregation. We hear so many stories about discrimination against African Americans in U.S. history that we sometimes end up overlooking the parallel discrimination faced by other minorities. A neat fact that I learned in the book was that Martin Luther King Jr. visited Clemente and others in Puerto Rico.

One other interesting fact that I recall is that while there are 4 million Puerto Ricans in Puerto Rico, there are 5 million people of Puerto Rican descent living in the U.S. mainland.

All in all, this book is a great tribute to Clemente's life. It also helped me understand a little bit more about Caribbean influence in the Major Leagues.

[Kaleb Munro · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Who Was Roberto Clemente" by James Buckley Jr. Some people do not know or have never heard of Roberto Clemente. Well if you read this review you you'll know by the end it is a book you should read it. I thought this was a great book about the greatest baseball players of all time. Roberto Clemente had many stats and many awards but what about his life. Roberto Clemente is a historic baseball player from a early weak Puerto Rico he lives a middle class
Life and he lives for the sport of baseball game that love will turn him into a player nobody will ever forget.

Roberto Clemente is a baseball player from Puerto Rico. This book is a true story on his life of how he became one of the greatest baseball players of all time. Roberto Clemente is one of the greats of baseball of not the best James Buckley Junior sure did it this time with this amazing who was book.


I recommend this book to anybody who needs it easy read or would like to know about the greatest baseball player of all-time Roberto Clemente if you also want to know more about this book read it.

[Saveer Verma · Rating 2 out of 5]

Roberto Clemente was a famous baseball player. I like that he was one of the first black players in MLB.

[Meah · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book I read for my second Goodreads was Who was Roberto Clemente? This book was written By James Buckley. This book is non-fiction. In this story, there is a boy named Roberto Clemente. He was a boy who lived in Puerto Rico and loved game baseball. He played baseball all the time and he valued it vary greatly in his life. Just like baseball, he valued his family. His family worked hard to earn money to have a successful life and they all viewed family as important. When Roberto lived in Puerto Rico he played they didn’t have organized teams or equipment so they made it up. He became very good. He first joined the Sello Rojo Rice factory team. This was his big first step into his future life. Roberto was getting noticed because of his amazing ability to play baseball. He then joined the Crabbers of Puerto Rico. The Crabbers had many players from the United States on their team in the off-season which helped Roberto get noticed.

He soon was asked to sign with major league teams and he just kept going up from there. Even though it sounds all great Roberto had some struggles. In the United States, no many people spoke Spanish and Roberto didn’t know English so he had a hard time talking to many people or understanding anything that was being said. He also had experienced racism which he had never heard of before. He even though his race was some of the reasons why he didn’t get the awards he earned later on in his baseball career. Roberto became an all-star, MVP, and twelve-time Golden globe winner in his years playing. He played with the Pirates and brought them to win the World Series. Roberto Clemente was also a very big influence in communities he taught baseball and helped many people in need. Overall Roberto Clemente is someone who will be remembered in baseball history forever and he has created such an impact on that world.

I would recommend this book it was very good. I think people that are into sports or more importantly baseball would like this book. I don’t personally like baseball but I still thought it was an interesting book because it goes beyond just the game. I liked how this book made it easy for you to read and be interested in learning things other than just having long pages of facts and boring words about a topic that I wouldn’t learn anything from. One thing that I did dislike was that at the end of the book I think it rushed the ending a little bit and could have explained what happens at the end a little better. But I think this book was a very interesting book and many people should read about this impactful man.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Who was Roberto Clemente?” By James Buckley Jr. is a biography about world famous baseball player Roberto Clemente. In 1952, he was born in Puerto Rico. He had a love for baseball and would focus on it more than anything on the world. According to the book, he loved it so much that it was to the point where his mother worried and tried to burn the bat. Surprisingly, I never knew that I was actually going to like this book. Since I’m not so interested in learning about baseball or sports in general, I thought this book would have been boring. It turns out that I’m wrong for every single reason! This book actually made me sad for the reasons that he couldn’t get the same luxury as white people (segregation), his older sister died when he was just a child, and he basically grew up poor (but he was still free.) I recommend this book to sports fans because Roberto Clemente made a big change to Major League Baseball history and Major League Baseball is sports. But I also recommend this book to ANYONE because I believe there would not be anything wrong about learning a new subject, even if you hate it. Plus, I believe that this book is pretty understandable like the other “Who was,” or “What was,” books.

[Robert]

I think this book is a really good book, because The Who was books always gives a bunch of facts, information, and if you don’t know about something or someone and who was made it, and you read it you will know everything about it after you read the book. Roberto Clemente was a baseball player who was the best baseball player till he died. When he was young his mom was afraid that he would like baseball way too much, so she tried throwing his bat in the fireplace, but then Roberto saved it from the flames. Roberto Clemente was Spanish and was learning English slowly, the writers wrote some words for him weirdly making fun of him. When he came back to Puerto Rico he found a girl in a drug store and fell in love and asked her out, sent her letters, then she finally said yes when her parents agreed to let her be with someone. Roberto Clemente died from a plane crash, later after that the president gave Roberto Clemente’s wife a freedom reward.

[Paula Méndez [boricuabooklover] · Rating 5 out of 5]

Being half Puerto Rican, there was no question of whether or not I knew about Roberto Clemente. When I saw this book, I had to have it! Reading about this life and the challenges he faced as a Puerto Rican living in the United States was astounding and heartbreaking. All I ever knew him as was just one of the greatest baseball players of all time, but after reading this, I learned more. Now I can understand why my father idolized him so much. Clemente may have been one of the greatest professional baseball players ever, but he was also a kindhearted man to not just those in the United States and Puerto Rico, but in other parts of the world. This man did not care about the money or the fame. He dedicated his life to help young men like him achieve their dreams and to help those who needed it. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wishes to know about this amazing man.

[Jonathan]

This is the story about an African American hero and a true legend Roberto Clemente. Roberto and his family loved baseball. They would play for so long that they would miss dinner. Roberto was a very good player, but he had one big problem. He was from Puerto Rico and he could not speak English. So when he said simple words like yes or okay, it would sound like yee or okee. Even though he could not speak English, he also had to deal with racism. Although Roberto had some struggles along the way, he did have one friend that helped him with his English and he also was able to meet another great African American named Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Clemente were great legends of our time.

I give this book a 10/10 because Roberto Clemente was in a place where he could not speak English. He held on and kept his trust in God. This led him to true victory.

[AMAO · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who Was Roberto Clemente? by James Buckley Jr.
Published September 25, 2014

<3

Growing up the youngest of seven children in Puerto Rico, Roberto Clemente had a talent for baseball. His incredible skill soon got him drafted into the big leagues where he spent 18 seasons playing right field for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Who Was Roberto Clemente? tells the story of this remarkable athlete: a twelve-time All-Star, World Series MVP, and the first Latin American inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

[Barbara VA · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for 2 reasons.I had just finished Doris Kearns Godwin’s Wait Till Next Year that was an homage to Baseball in the Brooklyn Dodger era. I also have an avid reader, 6 year old Sport fanatic grandson. My husband and I recently sent book fair $ and we challenged him to get 1 biography. No restrictions on who, he chose Clemente so I read a different one so we could discuss the great man. What a joy to discuss books with him! WhatI have to look forward to!!!

[Miss Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an incredible life cut short too soon. Roberto Clemente is a baseball player from Puerto Rico who worked his way to the major leagues while not speaking English. He went on to set a high standard for other players both on and off the field. His life was cut short at 38 while traveling with aide supplies to a foreign country. upper elementary

[David Rough · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roberto Clemente is one of my favorite baseball players of all time. I grew up an hour and a half south of Pittsburgh in W.V. in the 1960sand 1970s when Roberto was a key to the Pirate's success. This concise biography for young readers was an excellent source of information and presented this baseball great in an appropriate honoring light.

[Jefe · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a fifth grade teacher I think these Who Was books are great for students. I enjoyed reading this one immensely. I would recommend to all fifth graders. Low readers will also be able to take on this book independently. For all students who are interested in baseball and the civil rights era. Great book for kids, and Roberto Clemente left this world to soon.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 Stars. a short book for kids but I love the subject matter. Roberto was an amazing person. it was fun to hear about his athleticism at a young age and learn about the back injury that he suffered very early in his career. I didn't know about all the acts of generosity before he died in the plane crash. what a hero in pioneer for baseball.

[Margret · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another must have. One of my favorite baseball players and I still remember when he lost his life in a airplane crash. I read it with my grandkids so they know about this Puertorrican who made history. I loved it and recommend it.

[James Cope · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked this book. This book is about a baseball player named Roberto Clemente. He was a player for the pirates. He was also a really good humanitarian. He is Puerto Rican and would help them out and bring them food and good stuff like that. But unfortunately he died in a plane crash.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clemente was an amazing athlete and humanitarian whose life ended way too soon. I knew things about him before but this book had many interesting facts about his life that I wasn’t aware of previously.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 🌟
He played on a few different teams. He went to a Marine training camp for a little bit. It wasn’t fair for him when the U.S. traded black players wrongly. He wasn’t allowed to go to the swimming pool with the rest of his teammates.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great book and provides basic information that is interesting.