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THE ANCIENT GREEK OLYMPICS

Name: THE ANCIENT GREEK OLYMPICS
Author: Richard Woff
ISBN: 0-19-521581-8

by Richard Woff ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 27, 2000

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Woff offers a quick overview of the ancient games’ purpose and structure, emphasizing that they were regarded more as worship than entertainment. The author describes the athletes’ oaths, rituals, and strenuous preparations, as well as each day’s events, then adds chapters on women’s athletics, the proliferations of the games that led to the development of professional athletes, and the modern revival of the Olympics. Anecdotes from ancient writers flesh out the recital, and the illustrations—a mix of classical art and artifacts with shots of 20th-century Olympians—create visual links between the old and new games. Some photographs (e.g., the one of a New York Yankees ticker-tape parade) have been inserted as filler, but readers will get a basic picture of the games and their origins. (index) (Nonfiction. 9-11)

Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2000

ISBN: 0-19-521581-8

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Oxford Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ENTERTAINMENT & SPORTS

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BACH'S BIG ADVENTURE

by Sallie Ketcham ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1999

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PLB 0-531-33140-7 Ketcham’s first book is based on an allegedly true story of a childhood incident in the life of Johann Sebastian Bach. It starts with a couple of pages regaling the Bach home and all the Johanns in the family, who made their fame through music. After his father’s death, Johann Sebastian goes to live with his brother, Johann Christoph, where he boasts that he is the best organist in the world. Johann Christoph contradicts him: “Old Adam Reincken is the best.” So Johann Sebastian sets out to hear the master himself. In fact, he is humbled to tears, but there is hope that he will be the world’s best organist one day. Johann Sebastian emerges as little more than a brat, Reincken as more of a suggestion than a character. Bush’s illustrations are most transporting when offering details of the landscape, but his protagonist is too impish to give the story much authority. (Picture book. 5-9)

Pub Date: March 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-531-30140-0

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Orchard

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999

Categories:

CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION | CHILDREN'S ENTERTAINMENT & SPORTS

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THE BABE AND I

by David A. Adler ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1999

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Adler (also with Widener, Lou Gehrig, 1997, etc.) sets his fictional story during the week of July 14, 1932, in the Bronx, when the news items that figure in this tale happened. A boy gets a dime for his birthday, instead of the bicycle he longs for, because it is the Great Depression, and everyone who lives in his neighborhood is poor. While helping his friend Jacob sell newspapers, he discovers that his own father, who leaves the house with a briefcase each day, is selling apples on Webster Avenue along with the other unemployed folk. Jacob takes the narrator to Yankee Stadium with the papers, and people don’t want to hear about the Coney Island fire or the boy who stole so he could get something to eat in jail. They want to hear about Babe Ruth and his 25th homer. As days pass, the narrator keeps selling papers, until the astonishing day when Ruth himself buys a paper from the boy with a five-dollar bill and tells him to keep the change. The acrylic paintings bask in the glow of a storied time, where even row houses and the elevated train have a warm, solid presence. The stadium and Webster Avenue are monuments of memory rather than reality in a style that echoes Thomas Hart Benton’s strong color and exaggerated figures. (Picture book. 5-9)