Stealing Home: The Story of Jackie Robinson (Scholastic Biography) by Barry Denenberg

Stealing Home: The Story of Jackie Robinson (Scholastic Biography) Reviews

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  Jacki

  Stealing Home: The Story of Jackie Robinson is a biography, written for Intermediate readers.
  
  It is well written and informative. The photos are a plus. While I was aware of the significance of Jackie Robinson in baseball history, I learned quite a bit about his life outside of baseball from this book.
  
  I rated the book 4-stars. I felt the historical significance of Jackie Robinson's acceptance into the world of Major League Baseball was well done as well as the information provided on the predjudices faced by Blacks in the United States during the era. The photographs included in the book are a plus, especially for children. Children reading this book today would be surprised to discover Major League Baseball, as well as other sports, were segregated.
  
  This book could be used in a classroom during Black History Month as it is an excellent example of progress made throughout our history.
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  Aaron Sauceda

  Jackie Robinson is AWESOME! This book is all about his life and how he was so sucessful. The way the author did this is very good, and even this is my anchor text for biography, I think you should all read it.
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  Madison

  The book,"Stealing Home:The Story of Jackie Robinson," is a very good book. It told me about his early life, and athletic career. I enjoyed learning even more about him with this book. Something I learned was that Jackie played in the major leagues for his family and his mom especially. This book was recommended to me by Ms. Dayhoff and i really liked it so I recommend it to anyone who likes baseball or to anyone who would likes to learn more about Jackie Robinson.
• 
  Blake

  “Stealing Home, the story of Jackie Robinson” by Barry Denenberg is a biography about Jackie Robinson’s life. This book starts off with Jackie in his high school years playing the sports he loves. He played football, basketball, baseball, and ran track. While being the best at all of those sports, he loved football the most and had dreams about becoming a professional football player. He was a top running back in the nation during his senior year and was getting offers from colleges all over wanting him. He was also outstanding at track and ran in the Olympics in Germany his senior year. Adolf Hitler was the leader of the games and was very upset when Jackie, a black man, beat his white runners there. After Jackie graduated high school, he attended University California Los Angeles. He started out at halfback and played great his freshman and sophomore years leading the nation in yards per carry and touchdowns. After that year he started to be a troublemaker and ended up dropping out of college and going into the military. He was in it for awhile but eventually the segregation got to him and he decided to leave and move back home. While all of this was going on he had a girlfriend named Rachel who would soon become his wife. He started to play baseball in the negro leagues for a job now. He was the top player in the whole league for the first year and got noticed by Branch Rickey the Brooklyn Dodgers manager at the time. He ended up making him an offer to play in the pros with the whites and became the first black man to ever play an organized sport with the whites. He wasn't the only black player for long and soon after there were quite a few black players in the league. He was the best player in the league his second year into it and along with Branch Rickey they won four out of the five World Series Championships they played in. Rickey soon after retired and then so did Jackie.
  
  The two main characters in the book are Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey his coach and manager. Jackie was the biggest icon to change segregation to start to slow down and have everyone become equal. throughout the country. He was mainly known for playing baseball but also was a huge part in the civil rights movement. Branch Rickey was and will always be one of the risk taking and best coach and manager ever in the game of baseball.
  
  The setting takes place in the early to mid 1900's, in California. It starts off with in Jackie’s life up throughout college. He then went to Hawaii while he was in the military and then ended up back at home and traveling along with the baseball team around the country. He stayed in Brooklyn while he played for them but then when he retired he moved back to Los Angeles.
  
  I would recommend this book to anyone and more for the baseball fan. It is a great book to learn about the start of baseball and the civil rights movement. I would also recommend it to anyone looking for a good, short read about a great individual. I rate this book a five because the story line was great with the details and that I learned a lot.
  
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  Sydney

  " Stealing Home the Story of Jackie Robinson " is a great book that I enjoyed reading. It talks about all of the struggles that Robinson had to face to be able to follow his dreams of becoming a professional athlete. Not only does it talk about the time where he was playing baseball, but it also talks about his childhood, all the way up to the moment he retired . If you enjoy learning about people that impacted our world in a good way , and learning about what they had to face to do so, I would recommend this book to you.
• 
  Raynesha Nolden

  I'm done reading this book it was a very good book.
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  JESSICA J

  I thought Stealing Home: The Story of Jackie Robinson was a very well written biography of the famous baseball player targeted for intermediate grades, possibly a lower level reader in middle school. In addition to learning about the life of Jackie Robinson, students also learn about how different life was for people of color pre-civil rights era. I also think that students will appreciate that there are a lot of captioned photos throughout the book that depict a different time than most are probably used to seeing.
  
  In the reading classroom I could see several uses for this book. Just to start, the main character represents diversity in different ways (race, socio-economic status, etc.) and all students can benefit from this. Different themes of his life can be discussed: hard work, overcoming challenges, etc. Students could also view this book from a historical lens and compare and contrast differences or similarities from a biography of someone from todays times or teach about segregation. Specific passages from different parts of the book could be taken out and read/analyzed/summarized/inferred, etc. I would also recommend this book to reluctant boy readers because of the sports element. Overall, I think this book is a great addition to my classroom library.
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  Miguel

  This book was very informational about Jackie Robinson. He was the first African American to ever play in the Major Baseball League. He told me about his childhood, the time he was in collage, the time he was in the military during World War Two, and much more. I read this book because of the biography that we did, but then I grew an interest into this book. I recommend this book to people who love baseball and would like to learn about Jackie Robinson.
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  Erika Reynolds

  This is a very informative book that focuses on Jackie Robinson’s baseball career and contributions to civil rights. It’s clearly written for middle grades, but that doesn’t take away from the information presented. The book gives some brief background about Robinson’s life, but spends most of its time focusing on his college and post-college life as an athlete. I enjoyed the pictures and pacing of the chapters.
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  Lindsey

  Excellent read aloud to my kids that promoted dialogue about racism and integration. I have great respect for Jackie Robinson and his wife Rachal as well as Branch Rickey. I appreciate what they did to help promote more rights for blacks.
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  Sarah Boren

  Read with our 6th, 7th, and 8th graders! I already loved Jackie Robinson, but this book taught me a lot that I didn't know. The kids had some idea of what it was like for black people in this time, but this book really gave them a look from Jackie and his family's perspective.
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  Collin

  This was an amazing book and really showed that anyone of any race can accomplish anything in life you just have to try and never give up no matter how much pressure so keep pushing tell you succeed.
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  AMY

  117 pages. I read two chapters. It was pretty good but seems like it was written for middle or high school level. I would skip this one. Not recommended.
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  Stevie

  It was a good book, but a little to easy to read, it was meant for a younger reader.
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  Addison Woods

  This book was great!
  I understand the story of Jackie Robinson much more now!
  I definitely recommend it to anyone wanting to read a shorter book (a little more than 100 pages) with a great story!
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  Lucas Dennis

  it was interesting it was okay 👍