About This Book:
*Review Contributed By Karen Yingling, Staff Reviewer*
In It To Win It!
I enjoyed the fact that a variety of sports are presented, from dance, kayaking, wheelchair hiking, and mountain climbing to the more common basketball and soccer. There is also a range of disabilities from a variety of causes. All of the subjects had challenges to face, but found ways to not only come to terms with their situations but to constructively work with them to meet their goals.
Dion MBD’s artwork is colorful and shows not only the athletes, but good details about their sports and the backdrops against which they play. I particularly liked the kayak picture; it showed such a sense of movement!
While there are a lot of individual biographies and memoirs about disabled athletes, this is the first collective biography for younger readers that I have seen. Readers who want to know more about this topic would do well to check out A Sporting Chance : How Paralympics Founder Ludwig Guttmann Saved Lives with Sports by Alexander and Drummond. For coverage of lots of different athletes, there are lots of books, but usually few paralympians are covered. Some good ones are 100 Athletes Who Shaped Sports History by Jacobs, Women in Sports : the Complete Book on the World’s Greatest Female Athletes by Layden, Kid Athletes : True Tales of Childhood from Sports Legends by Stabler and Girls Race! : Amazing Tales of Women in Sports by Allen. I hope that we will begin to see more books about paralympians; Disabled Athletes: 21 Inspiring True Sports Stories by Adler is due to be published in July, 2025.
