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Skywalking: How Ten Young Basketball Stars Soared to the Pros

by Jeff Rud

Victoria Times-Colonist sportswriter Jeff Rud has put together a collection of mini-biographies of 10 professional basketball players – eight men and two women – as a way of getting across his message that success in pro sports is as much about hard work as it is about talent.

Rud, author of Long Shot, about Canadian basketball star Steve Nash (who also appears here), has chosen his subjects well. He describes the careers of young athletes whose personal stories all have some inspirational element: the religious devotion of the Vancouver Grizzlies’ Shareef Abdur-Rahim, the gritty girl-power determination of WNBA star Dawn Staley, and the hard-knocks background of Philadelphia’s Allen Iverson, who overcame a teenage stint in prison to become the shortest player to lead the NBA in scoring.

Rud is careful about revealing his sources – there’s no attempt here to pass this off as original research. Still, most young fans will already know a lot of the basic details about the stars in the book, as most of the descriptive material and quotes come from newspapers, magazines, and web sites. The book’s main value lies in the way Rud has pulled together the stories of these 10 basketball stars, and packaged them around one work-ethic-inspired theme. In an age where pro basketball has taken on a circus-like atmosphere, it’s good to see a book focused on something more positive.

 

Reviewer: Paul Challen

Publisher: Polestar Book Publishers

DETAILS

Price: $9.95

Page Count: 192 pp

Format: Paper

ISBN: 1-896095-46-1

Released: Nov.

Issue Date: 2000-1

Categories:

Age Range: ages 10+