Martina and Chrissie

 I had all intentions of writing about something else tonight but then Chris Evert, THE CHRIS EVERT, commented on one of my tweets from earlier today. What?!  That's just too cool! And of course, it all began with a book.


Every Monday, Mrs. Yager's third graders eagerly enter the library for our "book of the week."  Many of the books have been nonfiction narratives about people the students would never normally meet: Ada Lovelace, James Van der Zee, Sophie Blanchard, Muddy Waters, Eugen Sandow...And today it was Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova.


 

After I introduce our book of the week in the library, Mrs. Yager revisits it in the classroom and continues to work with it throughout the week.  All of these books increase our background knowledge and expose our students to other worlds and life stories.  The kids are going to know so much by the end of the year! We did coding in honor of Ada, hot air balloon facts and an experiment in the library for Sophie, photography for James, a fitness log for Sandow, etc.

Today's book was Martina and Chrissie (written by Phil Bildner and illustrated by Brett Helquist)

We talked tennis, rivalry, competition, perseverance, fitness, concentration and more. We watched the above trailer and some of the 1978 Wimbledon match (see below). The kids were fascinated by the tennis and fortunately, Mrs. Yager's husband plays so she knew the rules.  I'm not much of a tennis player and you definitely don't want me to keep score.

To me, the discussion on healthy rivalries was even more interesting since I just finished watching the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary on the Lakers and Celtics. (Yes, now I am a full fledged Lakers/Magic Johnson fan). There IS a 30 for 30 on these two amazing women (I would have been surprised if there wasn't).  I must get my hands on it. Pronto.  In the meantime, you really should read this book.  The writing is well done, almost poetic and the illustrations are impressive.  You could hear the "oohs and ahhhs" when I shared a full page spread or the close up of Martina.  The back matter includes a timeline and further sources. The book makes you want to know more about tennis and these amazing athletes. I look forward to sharing it with more classes, especially in January during our 4th grade Sibert Smackdown.

And I just have to say this: "The love we have for this book is infinitely farther from the love in the game of tennis." So true!

PS-Thanks for the tweet, Chris!  Made my day!