The Greatest: Muhummad Ali

Myers, Walter Dean. The Greatest: Muhummad Ali. Scholastic, 2001. 172 pp. Lexile 1030.

Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Clay, has been called the greatest athlete of the twentieth century.  Renowned YA writer Walter Dean Myers clearly admires Ali as an athlete and as a political activist.  This compelling biography emphasizes the public man and his sport, with little about his personal life.  Sports fans will appreciate the level of detail throughout about Ali’s boxing.  Myers also thoroughly addresses Ali’s famous conversion to Islam and refusal to fight in Vietnam, discussing the largely negative reaction of sportswriters and fans but also the inspiration at the time to young black men such as Myers himself. As he says in his introduction, “Heroes that looked anything like me were hard to come by when I was a kid growing up in Harlem.”  With a black-and-white photograph in almost every chapter and a timeline of fights at the end, this will be an appealing choice for a biography or history unit, or pleasure reading.

Reading Std #7:  Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, visually and quantitatively, and in words.  Students who like boxing may be interested in viewing the Oscar-nominated documentary, "When We Were Kings," about the heavyweight championship fight in Zaire--now the Democratic Republic of the Congo--between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali, which took place in 1974, after Ali had an earlier championship title taken away when he refused to serve in the military.  (Some students may find the boxing footage disturbing.)  Have students compare the tone of the movie and its attitude towards Ali with that of the Myers biography.

Ben Franklin's Almanac: Being a True Account of the Good Gentleman's Life

Fleming, Candace. Ben Franklin's Almanac: Being a True Account of the Good Gentleman's Life. 2003. 120pp. Lexile 1000.

Fleming uses a scrapbook approach to convey Ben Franklin’s multiple interests and talents in this original approach to a key historical figure.  Rather than the usual chronological organization, she groups the information by topics such as family, boyhood, science, the Revolution, and his time in France.  Within each broad topic are a page or two about narrower topics. Heavily illustrated, with a design that makes it resemble an old-fashioned book, the book starts with a timeline and includes anecdotes, documents, quotes from his writing and writings about him, and extensive visual elements.  Great for browsing and to get an overview of this complex man.  A bibliography, lists of further reading and websites, and an index round it out.

Web tie-in:  At the author's website, candacefleming.com, view the 4-minute Classroom Cast video of her from Random House in which she talks about how she approaches writing biographies.  She discusses not just her research but also the questions she finds herself asking about the person and how that person has been portrayed, sometimes inaccurately, in history.  Have students consider historical figures they might like to know more about and what questions they'd have.

Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith

Heiligman, Deborah. Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith. 2009. 320pp. Lexile 1020.

It’s a rare young adult nonfiction book that combines science and romance!  This one does so beautifully.  It provides a fine introduction to Charles Darwin and his work but goes beyond that to show his views of religion and how they differed from those of his beloved wife, Emma, who worried that her husband’s work would undermine the religious tenets she valued.  Fans of Regency novels will be attracted by the elegant silhouettes of the Charles and Emma on the cover, with a primate loping into the picture behind Darwin.  Heiligman does a masterful job with her topic, choosing perfect quotes from Darwin’s writings and diaries, and the letters between husband and wife.  The book opens with Darwin making a list with one side of the page labeled “Marry” and the other, “Not Marry.”  He includes under reasons not to marry, “Cannot read in the Evenings—fatness & idleness—Anxiety & responsibility—less money for books.” Such well-chosen details fill this exemplary book, which won the first YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults.

Reading Std #9 for grades 6-8: Compare/contrast texts on similar themes or topics.  Have students compare the information in this biography about Darwin’s theory of evolution with that offered in Laurence Pringle’s Billions of Years, Amazing Changes, at a similar lexile level and published one year after the Heiligman book.

Maritcha: A Remarkable Nineteenth-Century Girl

Bolden, Tonya. Maritcha: A Remarkable Nineteenth-Century Girl. 2004. 48pp. Lexile 1190.

Much of what teens read about black history concerns slavery, racial bias, and/or the Civil Rights Movement.  This short, inspiring book offers a look at a girl in a middle class family in the nineteenth century.  Maritcha Remond Lyons, whose striking image looks out at readers from a photograph on the cover, was born in 1848 to parents who ran a prosperous boarding house in New York City.  When their business was ruined by the Draft Riots during the Civil War, they moved to Providence, R.I., where her father started an ice cream and catering business, and her mother worked as a hairdresser.  When Maritcha found that Providence had no high school open to blacks, she wouldn't accept being shut out of an education.  She took her cause to the legislature and succeeded in persuading them of the justness of her cause, after which she passed a rigorous entry exam.  She went on to become a teacher and then an assistant principal in Brooklyn for fifty years.  Bolden based this eye-opening book on an unpublished memoir Lyons wrote for her own family.  The book, which puts the subject’s life in historical context, is enriched with wonderful photographs and etchings from the era. An author’s note discusses Bolden's research and some of her decisions about what to include in the book.

Reading Std #2: Determine central ideas or themes and analyze their development; summarize key supporting details and ideas.  Although Maritcha Remond Lyons as a free black was in a better position than those who were slaves when she was born, she and her family nevertheless suffered from racism in a variety of ways.  Have students trace that racism through this short book, a task possible even for less skilled readers.

Fiction Tie-In  Maritcha's family lost their business during New York's Draft Riots.  The novel Riot by Walter Dean Myers uses a screenplay format in its dramatic look at the riots through the eyes of several characters, most importantly, a biracial girl whose family runs an inn in Manhattan.