Lou Gehrig: The Luckiest Man by David A. Adlar

I read the biography Lou Gehrig: the Luckiest Man written by David A. Adlar and illustrated by Terry Widener to my present Kindergarteners.  It was a great picture book for teaching compassion and good citizenship.  The story began in 1903.  This was the year Henry Ford sold his first automobile and the Wright Brothers made the first successful flight in an airplane.  In baseball, the first World Series was played.  This was also the year Louis Gehrig was born.  He became one of the greatest players in baseball history.

This picture book was a great teaching tool.  “Well-written biographies can be inspirational to children and are often preferred over the average school textbooks.” (Ellis 2007).  Many of my students are presently playing t-ball and our class is scheduled to play a t-ball game against Mrs.Ireland’s kindergarten class next week.  Therefore, baseball is a topic that is discussed a lot in class, on the playground and during lunch.  My 24 little students sat quietly on the carpet as I read this book to them.  Afterwards we had a lively discussion about this great ballplayer.  We talked about his compassion, his bravery and dedication.  We also talked about how he never missed a day of school and then became a baseball player who never missed a game.  While atColumbiaUniversity, he was offered a lot of money to play for the NY Yankees.  He quit school to play for this great team. Kendallsaid he mother would be very mad if he quit school.  Jonathan said that he should have finished school first.  I had to agree with the both of them. 

Lou Gehrig became a true hero as he was one of the best first basemen.  He was nicknamed Iron Horse because of his incredible stamina.  He played a record of 2,130 games in a Yankee uniform.  Sadly he was diagnosed with a rare deadly disease on his 36^th birthday.  He never complained.  Tamaury said he would cry if that was him.  We read that Gehrig spoke about his blessing: his fans, his family and his teammates.  Jennifer asked his Lou Gehrig was scared of dying.  We continued to read and found out that he didn’t dwell on the disease that would take his young life.  Instead he talked about all his accomplishments and that he was the luckiest man on the face of the earth to have lived such a great life.  Charity had a tear in her eye and responded that he was sure a brave man.  Here again I have to agree with my smart students.  Strasser and Seplocha (2007) refer to a position paper suggesting that reading aloud to children appears to be the most important activity for developing the skills necessary for reading improvement.  I also read in Hani Morgan’s article that good teachers pause and interact with students during interactive read-alouds by stopping at important sections in a book and asking students to predict what will happen next, what they like about a story, and other questions that lead to critical thinking.  We did a lot of this while reading about Lou Gegrig.

Gehrig died in 1941 at the age of 37 from ALS.  His Yankee uniform #4 has never been worn again.  Nick said his uniform has #4 on it and thinks his coach should call him Iron Horse as well. 

Terry Widener did a great job illustrating this picture book of Lou Gehrig’s life.  Her illustrations show the heroic proportions of the man and the game.  The emotional illustrations towards the end of the book were amazing.  I felt as if I was really there.  The last spread, showing vivid illustrations of Yankee Stadium on the day of Gehrig’s funeral, awash in rain, shows silence, sadness and love.  The lone baseball, pelted by raindrops, against a field of grass was simple but said a lot.  It was a powerful ending to this story.