BEACH WEEK - Surfer of the Century

TITLE: Surfer of the Century

AUTHOR: Ellie Crowe

WHO WAS AT THE BEACH? Duke Kahanamohi, a beachboy turned Olympian.

WHAT BEACH AND WHEN? Duke spent most of his time at Waikiki Beach in Hawaii perfecting his surfing and swimming in the early 20th century.

WHAT HAPPENED? When a local lawyer with an interest in swimming noticed how fast Duke cut through the water, he got involved in getting Duke into competitive races. Duke eventually won his first gold medal in Stockholm, Sweden in the 1912 Olympics. His interesting life included breaking many swimming records, along with some color barriers, a friendship with fellow Olympian and native American, Jim Thorpe and winning several Olympic medals for the U.S.A. team. He also developed the flutter kick, helped coach the Australian Olympic swim team, built his own surf boards, introduced surfing to Australia and the mainland of America, surfed for nearly two miles on a monster wave that was 30 feet high, acted in a couple of Hollywood movies, rescued eight people from a sinking boat via his surfboard, and served as sheriff of Honolulu. No wonder this guy is considered a legend!

Surfer of the Century is a beautifully illustrated tribute to Duke Kahanamohi.

Ages 9-12
◊◊◊◊

Activity: How fast can you swim the 100 meter freestyle? Duke’s fastest race time is recorded at 60.4 seconds. Can you beat that?

Learning to Read While Learning History

This is what I was reading in 1st grade:

Given the choice, I would rather have been reading this:

Today we are bombarded with more choices than ever, whether we are in the shoe store, on the car lot or in the cereal aisle. In my day everyone was wearing saddle shoes, driving station wagons, eating Wheaties for breakfast and, of course, learning to read with Dick and Jane. Well, happily, that whole variety of options thing has carried over to beginning readers! Step Into Reading offers a batch of entertaining and educational titles on five levels. Step 1: ready to read (preschool to kindergarten), Step 2: reading with help (preschool to 1st grade), Step 3: reading on your own (1st to 3rd grade), Step 4: reading paragraphs (2nd to 3rd grade), Step 5: reading chapters (2nd to 4th grade).

Step 3 is a collection of over seventy books about nature, action heroes, princesses, witches, folk tales and familiar characters like Arthur. And I'm drooling over all the history titles available at this beginning reader level. Here they are:

• Abe Lincoln's Hat
• Babe Ruth Saves Baseball!
• Barack Obama: Out of Many, One
• The Bravest Dog Ever: The True Story of Balto (my review)
• Christopher Columbus
• Dinosaur Days
• Eat My Dust! Henry Ford's First Race
• The First Thanksgiving
• George Washington and the General's Dog (my review)
• The Great Tulip Trade
• Johnny Appleseed: My Story
• Lewis and Clark: A Prairie Dog for the President
• Listen Up!: Alexander Graham Bell’s Talking Machine
• Man O'War: Best Racehorse Ever
• The True Story of Pocahontas
  
• Paul Revere's Ride
  
  

SNOW WEEK - Conquering Everest

TITLE: Triumph on Everest: A Photobiography of Sir Edmund Hillary

AUTHOR: Broughton Coburn

WHO WAS WHERE IN THE SNOW? Edmond Hillary, a New Zealander, along with a Nepalese Sherpa named Tenzing Norgay, were the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest at 11:30 a.m. on May 29, 1953.

AMAZING FACTS ABOUT THIS EVENT: We would never have heard of Hillary if not for Tenzing. His quick thinking saved Hillary from what would have been a fatal crevice fall as they began to ascend Everest. After his Everest adventure, and being knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, Hillary set out to fulfill his childhood hero’s goal. Ernest Shakleton had not traversed Antarctica but Hillary accomplished this feat in 1958. Then he devoted most of his life to creating schools, medical access and ecological stability for the people of Nepal through the Himalayan Trust, which he founded. All of this from one adventurous man who started his life as a beekeeper!

This is an interesting National Geographic Society book with pictures aplenty.

Ages 9 to 12
◊◊◊◊

Activity: Can you name the highest mountain on each continent?

King of the Wind

Sea Biscuit, Man o’ War and War Admiral were all extraordinary race horses that could trace their sire line back to one special stallion. That stallion is the origin of the Thoroughbred. Marguerite Henry tells a romanticized version of his life in King of the Wind: The Story of the Godolphin Arabian.

Sham, one of the Moroccan Sultan's many fine horses, is sent as a gift to the king of France with his mute Muslim stable boy and five other prized Arabians. When they arrive in Paris, they aren't much to look at after being starved by a cruel ship captain and then enduring a grueling overland trek. To add insult to injury, King Louis XV mocks the Arabians small size, as the preferred breeds in Europe were much larger. More misfortunes ensue for both horse and boy, including cart pulling for the horse, prison time for the boy, and exile for them both after Sham makes time with a beautiful mare, Lady Roxana, who was intended for a prize stallion at The Earl of Godolphin's Estate. But close to two years later Sham's offspring wins every race imaginable. So Sham and the boy, Agba, are retrieved from their swamp home and Sham is finally prized for the rest of his days. This is an enjoyable story for anyone, but is a must read for all horse lovers.

Awards: 1949 Newbery Medal Winner

Ages 9-12

◊◊◊◊◊

Activity: Can you match the breed of horse to their country of origin? To make your own poster, print this link (two legal size horizontal pages), and with color pencils, color the name of the horse breed the same color as it's place of origin. Color all of the horses and the map and cut everything out and glue on poster board. Shannon used a half sheet of standard poster board.

Here is Shannon's poster.

Shannon made the words Shetland Pony yellow and that
breed's country of origin, Scotland, yellow as well.

As stated earlier, the Godolphin Arabian is on Seabiscuit’s pedigree. And speaking of Seabiscuit, what a fabulous movie! It is an incredible yet true horse racing story that happened during the Great Depression. A down on their luck horse, jockey, trainer and owner came together to form an unbeatable team and provide inspiration to a down on their luck nation. Full of heart. I highly recommend it!

The Old Ball Game

Here are a couple of good book ideas for any baseball fan.

First I’ll discuss a book that is about the sport of baseball and men with the God-given talent to play it well, while dealing with the human-made obstacle of segregation. We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball is a beautiful book brimming with luscious paintings by Kadir Nelson. Most of the paintings are static portraits of Negro League greats like John Henry “Pop” Lloyd, Oscar Charleston, Wilber “Bullet” Rogan and Josh Gibson. What I especially love are the scenes Nelson captured with his brush: The Monarch’s dug out, The Chicago American Giants disembarking from the train, Jackie Robinson stealing home plate, some of the Newark Eagles singing five part harmony on the team bus, a double page spread of Josh Gibson watching Satchel Paige pitching to Buck Leonard.

The forward is written by none other than Hank Aaron. The text is written by the artist himself in the anonymous voice of a Negro League player and covers the history of the league from the 1920’s to 1947 in 10 chapters (labeled as nine innings with one extra inning). You get a feeling for the personality and special talents of the players and managers. It is somewhat rambling at times, but what really struck me (I haven’t followed baseball since the Cincinnati Reds’ “Big Red Machine” days in the 70’s) was the ominous presence of segregation. It seems so weird that a team bus would sometimes drive through town after town without finding a restaurant that would serve blacks. “No shirt, no shoes, no service” makes sense but to not serve someone who has money a pork tenderloin sandwich with fries because of their skin color seems as culturally odd to me as Chinese women binding their feet or polygamy or scalp collecting, or I don’t know, cannibalism or something. Just odd.

For the sake of history I’ll share a family tale as it relates to segregation. My mother was born in 1928 in a small southern Indiana town. She told me about the segregated schools. Her home on North Broadway was near the black only Broadway School but she went to school a couple of blocks in the other direction on South Broadway. Her family employed a black cook named Lucy. Sometimes Lucy would take my Mom to a picture show (most probably a Shirley Temple movie). In the segregated theatre they would have to sit in the balcony which my Mom thought was pretty neat, but I wonder how that felt to dear, sweet Lucy? By the way, many years later, when Mom and Dad would go out on a Saturday night, Lucy would watch us (and cook what seemed like a feast after my cooking-challenged mother’s meals). We LOVED Lucy. She had a deep, pleasant laugh. We played old maid and a multitude of other games. We serenaded her with her favorite songs. She read us The Golden Book of 365 Stories. I vividly remember one New Year’s Eve when she filled the family room with colorful balloons and we stomped on them at midnight. Once she took us to see Biscuit Eater at the same theatre she had taken my mother years before. And we all sat together on the main floor. That movie was a tearjerker.

We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball winds down, as did the Negro League, with Jackie Robinson’s historic move to the majors. This book opened my eyes to the burden placed on Robinson. For anyone with an interest in baseball or segregation, this is an exceptional book.

Ages 9-12
◊◊◊◊

Activity: Click here for a coloring page of Jackie Robinson and here is a Negro League Baseball word search puzzle.



The other book, Moe Berg: The Spy Behind Home Plate was also interesting. I enjoyed getting to know Moe, someone I am ashamed to say, I had never heard of. He was the child of emigrant Ukrainian Jews who grew up pitching for his Newark, New Jersey school team while excelling in his classes. He was one of only a handful of Jews to attend Princeton at that time where his special talents were baseball and languages, his major. Upon graduation he signed on with the Brooklyn Robins (later called the Brooklyn Dodgers). He eventually attained a law degree and practiced law while playing ball in the Major Leagues in the spring and summer. How impressive is that!? When World War II was just heating up, Moe’s skill with languages (he could speak eight fluently) and his fame as a ballplayer made it handy for him to travel through baseball loving countries like Japan and those in Latin America and collect useful information for the U.S.A. Before all was said and done he was living a bit of a James Bond lifestyle, tracking down German scientists in a race to the atom bomb. This is definitely a life story worth reading!

Ages 9-12
◊◊◊◊