The Story of Jackie Robinson, Bravest Man in Baseball- Biography (Chapter Book)

The Story of Jackie Robinson Bravest Man in Baseball

Biography

This chapter book was a really good book. I have heard a lot about Jackie Robinson’s life story but I didn’t know as much stuff about him as I do now. I didn’t know that he was an all around good athlete. Jackie Robinson played football, basketball, baseball, and he ran track. When I read this in the book I was really surprised because you rarely find anyone who can play all of these sports and they are good at all of them.

The book talked about Jackie Robinson’s life and all the different struggles he had to overcome as an African American athlete. Jackie Robinson played baseball when American was still really segregated so people would always talk bad (especially fans) about him because of the color of his skin. When Jackie first started playing baseball he could not just go straight to an “white” baseball team because people was not having that, so Jackie had to start off playing for “black” teams such as the Kansas City Monarchs so people could see how good of a player he was. So Branch Rickey knew all about Jackie and he wanted to sign him to the Royals, but he needed Jackie to agree first to play for the Monarchs. After playing a short season with Kansas City Jackie was signed to the Montreal Royals. The fans and players did not like an African American playing on their team, so they would make racist comments to Jackie to try to make him quiet. However, that just made Jackie much stronger. After the fans and players on the team seem that Jackie was not backing down and that he was a really good player, they started to accept Jackie. Jackie leads the teams to many wins and World Series championships. Jackie got married to Rachel in 1946 and they had three children together. In 1947 Jackie was named the Rookie of the Year and at age 36 he retired from baseball. But not only was Jackie an athlete he also served in the U.S. Army during World War II. And after he retired from baseball he became heavily involved in the NAACP and other humanitarian activities he always felt like he needed to help the African American race as a whole. Jackie died at age 53.

The book had some illustrations but they really were not good illustrations. Maybe because this is a really old book, but the illustrations didn’t tell you anything about the words that were on that page, so the text and the pictures didn’t match. The illustrations were all in black and white so I really didn’t get any feeling from the pictures, and many times I just looked right over them. However, overall this was a really good book. It is a really easy read and I am sure students who are very interested in sports would enjoy reading this book.