Best of the Best in Basketball

From School Library Journal
Grade 5-7-Rutledge profiles eight stars in each sport. The athletes are all accorded exactly six pages and three full-color photographs; boxed insets contain personal information, career highlights, and a quote. While both titles stress overcoming obstacles on the path to success, Tennis is the livelier of the two. It includes candid discussions of the troubled family relationships that seem to be endemic in big-time tennis. An example of the sometimes pithy style is this description of the mother of 1950s star Maureen Connolly: "[She] became the first in a long and unpleasant line of pathetic, overbearing tennis parents." While students doing more than a cursory report on any of these individuals will require supplementary materials, these attractively packaged and well-written books should find a ready audience among the growing number of youngsters following women's professional sports.Richard Luzer, Fair Haven Union High School, VTCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Card catalog description
Discusses the past and future of women's basketball and presents biographies of eight of the sport's most famous players: Cynthia Cooper, Teresa Edwards, Lisa Leslie, Rebecca Lobo, Nikki McCray, Dawn Staley, Kate Starbird, and Sheryl Swoopes.


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Gr 5-8-The first 10 pages of this volume describe the ancient and modern history of gymnastics and culminate with an overview of the accomplishments of the "magnificent seven," the nickname of the successful U.S. women's team at the 1996 Olympics. The eight chapters that follow present biographical sketches of three of those team members (Dominique Dawes, Shannon Miller, and Dominique Moceanu) and five up-and-coming stars (Kris Maloney and Vanessa Atler of the U.S., Svetlana Khorkina from Russia, Simona Amanar of Romania, and Ling Jie from China). Each chapter includes three full-color photos and a chart of career highlights. The book does not shy away from controversial issues, addressing eating disorders, injury and sometimes even death, pushing young girls too hard, and Moceanu's legal separation from her parents due to financial matters. For more detail on the USA team of 1996, try Nancy Kleinbaum's The Magnificent Seven (Bantam, 1996). Joel Cohen's Superstars of Women's Gymnastics (Chelsea, 1997) highlights four stars, only one of whom is duplicated here. Rutledge's attractive book complements these titles.-Kate Kohlbeck, Randall School, Waukesha, WI Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.


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