About this item
Sprint around the track and get to know Jesse Owens in this fascinating, nonfiction Level 3 Ready-to-Read, part of a new series of biographies about people "you should meet."Meet Jesse Owens, an African American runner who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin! What made his achievement even more memorable was that Adolph Hitler expected the Olympic Games to be a German showcase. In fact, he criticized the United States for even including black athletes on its Olympic roster. According to many reports, after Owens won his fourth gold medal, Hitler stormed out of the stadium. In 1936 Jesse Owens took a stand against racism and made history. A special section at the back of the book includes extras on subjects like history and math, plus a short article filled with interesting facts about the Olympics. With the You Should Meet series, learning about historical figures has never been so fascinating!
About the Author
Laurie Calkhoven has always been fascinated by history, and especially by the ordinary people who got caught up in extraordinary moments in history. She likes the small moments and bizarre facts that mostly get left out by the serious history books -- like whether or not a broken egg kept the American Revolution on track, and how putting your hands in your pockets and jiggling change could lead to an arrest in Nazi-occupied France.While she was researching her biography of George Washington, she started to wondering about life during the Siege of Boston. Soon, a character named Daniel was whispering in her ear, telling her about his secret work for General George Washington, and she wrote the novel DANIEL AT THE SIEGE OF BOSTON, 1776. A biography of Harriet Tubman led to a second novel in her BOYS OF WARTIME series--WILL AT THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG, 1863. Her third historical novel, MICHAEL AT THE INVASION OF FRANCE, 1943 rounds out the series.When she's not writing historical books, Calkhoven is at work on nonfiction books like I GREW UP TO BE PRESIDENT and historical mysteries for American Girl. You can find her online at www.lauriecalkhoven.com
