Seventh Child: A Family Memoir of Malcolm X is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of a great and controversial figure. No other book about Malcolm X - and there have been more than forty, in eight different languages - provides such enlightenment on the man, except, of course, his own autobiography. Told by loving sister Ella Little Collins, who knew Malcolm X better than anyone else, and her son, Rodnell P.

Collins, to whom Malcolm X was a much-loved and admired uncle and mentor, Seventh Child adds immeasurably to our knowledge of the man.

Sister Ella's tough love for and tenacious loyalty to her brother permeate the entire book. It was she who took him into her home after his father was lynched and his mother was institutionalized following a nervous breakdown. It was she who went into the streets of Boston looking for him when he was a rebellious teenager. It was she who arranged for his transfer to a progressive prison where he began to develop his intellectual skills. It was she who paid for his trip to the holy city of Mecca.

It was to her that he confided his growing concerns about the rampant corruption in the Nation of Islam headquarters in Chicago. And it was with her that he spent several hours early on the day he was assassinated, discussing such matters as bringing the United States before the World Court for violating human rights.