You Never Heard of Sandy Koufax?!

I really enjoyed this book. The opening line began with, "you never heard of Sandy Koufax" and that really grabbed my attention because I didn't. I enjoyed learning about his life and where he came from and I gained a lot of new information from it. The story about how terrible he was to how he became great was really amazing. I truly enjoyed this biography.

Great overview of the career of Sandy Koufax, who from '61 to '65 dominated baseball! I really liked this quote (from the great Willie Stargell), "Hittin' a Koufaxx fastball was like tryin' to drink coffee with a fork." Brilliant! And the cover of this book is super cool too! Love ya' Blue!

I liked that this biography focused on the struggles that Sandy Koufax went through in becoming a great pitcher, not just on his unstoppable greatness once he hit his stride. It humanizes him a little bit. It also makes the moment when he does emerge as a great pitcher seem that much more impressive. I liked all the statistics that were included and the mini factoids that appeared on a few pages. It's a good biography.

I loved this book and couldn’t wait to share it with the children at my school. As I’d expected, they loved the cover. They also loved the way the illustrator used gold on the pictures. The story was a little too hard for them. They were confused with the author’s use of first person plural. They did not get the way the author used the vernacular voice to tell the story. They needed more background information about Koufax.But they loved that it was about a baseball player. They liked the voice of the author and thought it was fun. When it came down to voting, the room was clearly divided: Children who loved baseball rated it a 5 and those who did not like baseball rated the book a 1.It is a book with wonderful facts about a show more fascinating man. I would suspect that ten and eleven year olds would enjoy the book a bit more than my young students, but I bet that a lot of the cleverness and fun of the book would elude even them. Maybe we need to create a new category of books: Picture Books for Grownups. I loved this book and would definitely recommend it to parents or teachers to read with their kids who love baseball. Not sure many children would really hang in there with the book on his own. Not even a big baseball fan. Not even a big baseball fan living in NY. A Sample: ‘One day one of our scouts, Al Campanis, invites Sandy to Ebbets Field---home of our team, the Brooklyn Dodgers---so’s he can see the hotshot pitch. After battin’ just one time against him, Campanis has seen enough. He says to Sandy, “Kid, how’d you like to play for us. Don’t think too hard.” Quick as you can say “Jackie Robinson,” this nineteen-year-old squirt was wearin’ Dodgers blue and earnin’ more dough than some of us old-timers.’Children’s Comments: You Never Heard of Sandy Koufax?!Elyssa, 6, said, "I liked how the words were written."Chloe, 6, said, "I liked how he did the glove."Sylvia, 5, said, "I liked the front cover.Jase, 5, said, "I liked the pictures."Children’s Ratings: 5, 1, 5, 5, 5, 5, 1, 5, 1 show less

What a great non-fiction piece! This book has gorgeous illustrations and a narrator written so realistically, you can almost hear the Brooklyn accent. Great information, but told in story format rather than one fact at a time. Perfect for baseball fans, but also students of history.

The holographic cover of Dodgers pitcher Sandy Koulfax immediately draws in children whether or not they are interested in sports. Sports, however, is a topic of great interest, especially for boys, and the structure of this book is likely to keep them reading. It has small charts of statistics and baseball card images woven in with sharp red, blue, black, white, and gold illustrations that depict the unusual career of Koulfax. The story is one of overcoming physical limitations and religious discrimination.

A short story about Sandy Koufax's career on the Brooklyn Dodgers as a pitcher. This was kind of a silly book with odd writing. It goes over Sandy's career as a pitcher with some statistics on the pages of Sandy's wins and losses. The illustrations of the characters were a little bizarre and almost disturbing. It did give a lot of details about Koufax's career but in a way that was almost comical.