Bound To Stay Bound

School Library Journal - 11/01/2014 K-Gr 3—This title highlighting events from baseball star Jackie Robinson's life is a preachy, moralistic account of courage. Its sentimentality and sugary-sweetness are a throwback to motivational tales of a century ago. Meltzer is highly selective in his presentation. Facts, including names, dates, and places, are few and far between, and the theme of bravery overrides all else. Meltzer assumes readers have a basic knowledge of baseball, and many terms are not defined. Eliopoulos's cartoonish illustrations are corny and, as Jackie is always shown as a small child (a characteristic of this series), border on disrespectful. This book isn't complete or thorough enough for use as a biography, and the perky tone will likely cause eye-rolling among readers and listeners. There are many other more informative, better written books on Robinson that also emphasize the themes of courage and racial equality, such as Cathy Goldberg Fishman's When Jackie and Hank Met (Marshall Cavendish, 2012), a picture book that parallels the lives of Robinson and Jewish baseball star Hank Greenberg, and April Jones Prince's easy reader Jackie Robinson: He Led the Way (Penguin, 2007).—Ann W. Moore, Schenectady County Public Library, NY - Copyright 2014 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Booklist - 02/01/2015 The latest installment in the Ordinary People Change the World series profiles Jackie Robinson, the baseball player who famously broke the color barrier in 1946. In a strange quirk, young Jackie tells his own story but appears throughout as a child, even when wearing his eventual Brooklyn Dodgers uniform. And while it looks a little odd to see little Jackie playing against a field of adult players, the singular perspective speaks directly to the book’s child audience. Indeed, with an eternally young narrator, comic-style illustrations, word-balloon dialogue, and a compact trim size, this immediacy is the key to the success of the whole series. The story concludes with Jackie holding his plaque in the Baseball Hall of Fame and telling other children of the mantle that comes with power and the power that comes from bravery. A brief time line with photos concludes. - Copyright 2015 Booklist.