Illus. in full color with black-and-white photos. "Covers not only the story of Robinson's prowess and his problems as the first black man to play in the major leagues, but also the story of the rise and fall of black baseball and some of its star players and managers. Nicely geared by vocabulary, sentence length, and print size to the primary grades audience."--"Bulletin, Center for Children's Books.
From School Library Journal
Grade 2-4-- A more indicative title for this book might be TheStory of All-Black Baseball and Jackie Robinson, as only two of thesix chapters deal with the life of Jackie Robinson, the first blackto play major league baseball. The writing style is consistent withthe other books in this series: choppy and unimaginative.Unremarkable color illustrations and standard black-and-whitephotographs are sprinkled liberally throughout the book. DavidAdler's Jackie Robinson: He Was the First (Holiday, 1989) is a moreinteresting biography aimed at the same reading level. That bookalso includes a table of contents, a list of important dates, anindex, and biographical information about the author andillustrator--features not included in O'Connor's book. The frontinside cover of O'Connor's book does have an area where the readeris encouraged to write his or her name and the date after he hasfinished reading the book.
--Tom S. Hurlburt, Minneapolis Public Library
Card catalog de*ion
Presents a biography of the first black baseball player to play inthe major leagues when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Alsotraces the history of all-black baseball teams.
