Informative, engaging, and important.
Alexander chronicles how Jewish doctor Ludwig Guttmann became “the founding father of the Paralympic Games.”
In 1917, with World War I underway, Guttmann graduated from high school and became an orderly in Germany’s National Emergency Services, where he met a paralyzed coal miner with a grim prognosis: “Dead in six weeks.” For decades, paralyzed patients’ futures remained bleak. In 1939, after courageously resisting the rising Nazi regime, Guttmann—by then a neurologist—escaped to England. In 1944 he established his Spinal Injuries Center at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, where bedridden “incurables” languished. Guttmann, however, resolved to rescue them from “the human scrapheap,” developing innovative treatments and encouraging self-sufficiency. Noting that playing such sports as wheelchair archery and basketball both “brought passion and fun back into patients’ lives” and improved their health, he realized that public competitions would also show nondisabled people that patients were “more than their injuries.” Through Guttmann’s tireless advocacy, a 1948 archery competition on Stoke Mandeville’s lawn evolved into the Paralympic Games, currently the world’s third-largest sporting event. The author explores Guttmann’s career in thorough medical and historical detail; diagrams and text boxes supplement discussions of everything from the nervous system to Nazi atrocities, enabling readers to fully appreciate his efforts. Alongside archival photographs, Drummond’s color cartoon illustrations extend the straightforward text. Profiles of contemporary Paralympians provide an inspiring epilogue. Most photographed figures, including Guttmann, appear White; one contemporary athlete presents Black.
Informative, engaging, and important. (timeline, bibliography, notes, index) (Biography. 8-12)Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-328-58079-5
Page Count: 128
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
For every dreaming girl (and boy) with a pencil in hand (or keyboard) and a story to share.
A multiaward–winning author recalls her childhood and the joy of becoming a writer.
Writing in free verse, Woodson starts with her 1963 birth in Ohio during the civil rights movement, when America is “a country caught / / between Black and White.” But while evoking names such as Malcolm, Martin, James, Rosa and Ruby, her story is also one of family: her father’s people in Ohio and her mother’s people in South Carolina. Moving south to live with her maternal grandmother, she is in a world of sweet peas and collards, getting her hair straightened and avoiding segregated stores with her grandmother. As the writer inside slowly grows, she listens to family stories and fills her days and evenings as a Jehovah’s Witness, activities that continue after a move to Brooklyn to reunite with her mother. The gift of a composition notebook, the experience of reading John Steptoe’s Stevieand Langston Hughes’ poetry, and seeing letters turn into words and words into thoughts all reinforce her conviction that “[W]ords are my brilliance.” Woodson cherishes her memories and shares them with a graceful lyricism; her lovingly wrought vignettes of country and city streets will linger long after the page is turned.
For every dreaming girl (and boy) with a pencil in hand (or keyboard) and a story to share. (Memoir/poetry. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-399-25251-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
Though a bit loose around the edges, a charmer nevertheless.
Tales of a fourth grade ne’er-do-well.
It seems that young Jordan is stuck in a never-ending string of bad luck. Sure, no one’s perfect (except maybe goody-two-shoes William Feranek), but Jordan can’t seem to keep his attention focused on the task at hand. Try as he may, things always go a bit sideways, much to his educators’ chagrin. But Jordan promises himself that fourth grade will be different. As the year unfolds, it does prove to be different, but in a way Jordan couldn’t possibly have predicted. This humorous memoir perfectly captures the square-peg-in-a-round-hole feeling many kids feel and effectively heightens that feeling with comic situations and a splendid villain. Jordan’s teacher, Mrs. Fisher, makes an excellent foil, and the book’s 1970s setting allows for her cruelty to go beyond anything most contemporary readers could expect. Unfortunately, the story begins to run out of steam once Mrs. Fisher exits. Recollections spiral, losing their focus and leading to a more “then this happened” and less cause-and-effect structure. The anecdotes are all amusing and Jordan is an endearing protagonist, but the book comes dangerously close to wearing out its welcome with sheer repetitiveness. Thankfully, it ends on a high note, one pleasant and hopeful enough that readers will overlook some of the shabbier qualities. Jordan is White and Jewish while there is some diversity among his classmates; Mrs. Fisher is White.
Though a bit loose around the edges, a charmer nevertheless. (Memoir. 8-12)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-64723-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
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