A Star Like Jesse Owens

Matthew is a young African-American boy who dreams of becoming an Olympic runner like his hero, Jesse Owens. There's one big problem, though Matthew has asthma, which makes it hard for him to run. When his journalist father is assigned to cover the 1936 Olympics in Germany, Matthew jumps at the chance tag along. He has never been out of Ohio before, let alone to Europe. Will Owens's amazing Olympic victories inspire Matthew in his own chosen career?

Before Usain Bolt or Tyson Gay, Bob Beamon or Carl Lewis, Jesse Owens was perhaps the greatest and most famous athlete in track and field history. Jesse Owens was born on a farm to a large family with many siblings. His grandparents had been slaves, and his sharecropper parents were poor. But against all odds, Jesse went on to become one of the greatest athletes in history. He learned to run with such grace that people said he was a "floating wonder." After setting multiple world records as a college athlete, including three in less than an hour—"the greatest 45 minutes in sport"—Owens competed in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Adolf Hitler intended for the games to display Aryan superiority, but Jesse disrupted that plan. He became the first American track-and-field athlete to receive four Olympic gold medals and established his legacy as a hero in the face of prejudice. This child friendly entry in David A. Adler's well-known series contains an accessible mix of biography, facts, and history supported with lifelike illustrations. Back matter includes an author's note and a timeline. For almost thirty years, David Adler’s Picture Book Biography series has profiled famous people who changed the world. Colorful, kid-friendly illustrations combine with Adler’s “expert mixtures of facts and personality” (Booklist) to introduce young readers to history through compelling biographies of presidents, heroes, inventors, explorers, and adventurers. These books are ideal for first and second graders interested in history or who need reliable sources for school book reports.

Civil rights icon, Ambassador Andrew Young and his daughter, Paula Young Shelton, deliver a powerful oral history about a special day in Andrew’s childhood that changed him forever. This story of race relations in the 1930s South is illustrated by bestselling Caldecott Honor winner Gordon C. James. As a boy, Andrew Young learned a vital lesson from his parents when a local chapter of the Nazi party instigated racial unrest in their hometown of New Orleans in the 1930s. While Hitler's teachings promoted White supremacy, Andrew's father, told him that when dealing with the sickness of racism, "Don't get mad, get smart." To drive home this idea, Andrew Young Senior took his family to the local movie house to see a newsreel of track star Jesse Owens racing toward Olympic gold, showing the world that the best way to promote equality is to focus on the finish line. The teaching of his parents, and Jesse Owens' example, would be the guiding principles that shaped Andrew's beliefs in nonviolence and built his foundation as a civil rights leader and advisor to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The story is vividly recalled by Paula Young Shelton, Andrew's daughter.

At the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics, track and field star Jesse Owens ran himself straight into international glory by winning four gold medals. But the life of Jesse Owens is much more than a sports story. Born in rural Alabama under the oppressive Jim Crow laws, Owens's family suffered many hardships. As a boy he worked several jobs like delivering groceries and working in a shoe repair shop to make ends meet. But Owens defied the odds to become a sensational student athlete, eventually running track for Ohio State. He was chosen to compete in the Summer Olympics in Nazi Germany where Adolf Hitler was promoting the idea of “Aryan superiority.” Owens’s winning streak at the games humiliated Hitler and crushed the myth of racial supremacy once and for all.

This New York Times–bestselling author’s account of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin offers a “vivid portrait not just of Owens but of ’30s Germany and America” (Sports Illustrated). At the 1936 Olympics, against a backdrop of swastikas and goose-stepping storm troopers, an African American son of sharecroppers won a staggering four gold medals, single-handedly falsifying Hitler’s myth of Aryan supremacy. The story of Jesse Owens at the Berlin games is that of an athletic performance that transcends sports. It is also the intimate and complex tale of one remarkable man’s courage. Drawing on unprecedented access to the Owens family, previously unpublished interviews, and archival research, Jeremy Schaap transports us to Germany and tells the dramatic tale of Owens and his fellow athletes at the contest dubbed the Nazi Olympics. With incisive reporting and rich storytelling, Schaap reveals what really happened over those tense, exhilarating weeks in a “snappy and dramatic” work of sports history (Publishers Weekly). “A remarkable job of tackling a complex subject and bringing it to life.” —John Feinstein “Add[s] even more luster to the indelibly heroic achievements of Jesse Owens.” —Ken Burns

Matthew is a young African-American boy who dreams of becoming an Olympic runner like his hero, Jesse Owens. There's one big problem, though Matthew has asthma, which makes it hard for him to run. When his journalist father is assigned to cover the 1936 Olympics in Germany, Matthew jumps at the chance tag along. He has never been out of Ohio before, let alone to Europe. Will Owens's amazing Olympic victories inspire Matthew in his own chosen career?

Ture or False? Although Helen Keller was blind and deaf, she knew several languages.

A simple biography of one of the most inspirational athletes in history.