Sally Ride

Reviewed by: Jill O'Connor - North Yarmouth Academy, Yarmouth, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: June 10, 2015

Review

There is a disclaimer at the beginning of the book that explains that though this book "was written to sound like Sally Ride is speaking to the reader, these are not her actual statements". I'm sure that this biography was written in first person because that is the way that students are asked to present biographical information, but as a reader, this was off-putting. When reading a biography, actual photographs are preferable and the use of illustrations to show Ride's face in every picture until her space shuttle mission in 1984, when she was 33-years-old, left me wondering if there were no photographs available or if they couldn't get permission to use them. It leant the book a cartoonish air. The actual photographs used were strangely generic, i.e. a photo of a street in Los Angeles, of Dodgers Stadium, of Stanford University, and then of the front page of the newspaper depicting the Challenger tragedy in 1986 in which Christa McCauliffe's sister cries in agony as she watches her sister blow up! The other quibble was that the last page mentions Ride's foundation and then switches to "I died of pancreatic cancer." It was jarring to have her tell us that about herself. EIther the timeline should be included at the beginning of the book so that the reader knows this is coming, or the voice should have changed at the end to offer a conclusion about Ride's death and her impact on the world. I felt as if I had been kicked in the stomach with this off-hand mention in Ride's "voice". Biographies for gr 1-3 are always needed, and this one is not bad in terms of information, but it could have been so much better.

Overall Book Score: good