46. The Greatest: Muhammad Ali by Walter Dean Myers

THE GREATEST: MUHAMMAD ALI by Walter Dean Myers (Scholastic, 2001)

GENRE: Nonfiction / Biography

HONORS: YALSA Best Books for Young Adults, YALSA Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Readers

REVIEW:

In this biography, Walter Dean Myers chronicles the public life of Muhammad Ali, the man Sports Illustrated named the Greatest Athlete of the 20^th Century.  Growing up in the segregated South, Ali, born Cassius Clay, became a role model for young people of every color when he won the gold medal for boxing in the 1960 Olympics and then went on to a successful professional boxing career.  His brashness and confidence especially influenced young African Americans in a time when many were demeaned with the nicknames “boy” and “uncle” and expected to ignore race.  Ali lived his life with the goal of doing what he believed was right, leading him to convert to Islam even though he faced many harsh critics.  He even risked his career and imprisonment by refusing to serve in the Vietnam War because it was against his beliefs.  The book follows Ali up through his last fight in the ring and the biggest fight of his life, his current fight against Parkinson’s disease.

OPINION:

With this biography, readers can feel Walter Dean Myer’s admiration for Ali and I came away from the book with a great amount of admiration for the legend, as well.  While other biographers may have chosen to make Ali’s personal life a larger part of the story, I appreciate Myers’ insistence on telling about the man he knows as the Greatest.  His personal life is definitely a part of him, but it is his public life that made him the role model he still is today.  His willingness to give up everything in pursuit of his beliefs is something that all tweens can look up to and honor.  In Myers’ final words about Ali, he writes, “Whatever he is doing, whatever he has done, he has always been a man of outstanding character.  He has always done what he believed to be the right thing.  It is the most that anyone can ask of a life.”  In a society in which athletes and actors are looked upon as role models, it is these last few sentences that emphasize what makes Ali different from many of them and what makes him a man worthy of admiration.

IDEAS:

This biography would be great in library displays about influential people and sports legends.  It would also be a great book to use in a library program on the Civil Rights movement.