Maw Books

Maw Books – book reviews, book recommendations, book lists, author interviews and more!

As an adult, I have found that I am introduced to much of history through picture books.  Do you know the Sammy Lee story?  Read  Sixteen Years in Sixteen Seconds: The Sammy Lee Story by Paula Yoo and illustrated by Dom Lee and you will.  Son to Korean Immigrants, Sammy Lee, would watch children play in the public swimming pool on the hot summer days in 1932.  But people of color, like himself, were only allowed to use the pool one day a week.  During that single day, he began to learn how to dive.

But discrimination wasn’t just apparent at the swimming pool, he wasn’t even allowed to attend his own prom despite being class president.  Over the next sixteen years, he dreams of becoming an Olympic diving champion.  He works hard and relentlessly.  And all the while, fulfilling his father’s dream to become a doctor.

At the age of twenty-eight he finally gets his chance to compete for Olympic gold.  Despite the international venue, he still faces prejudice because he wasn’t white.  This only added to his determination to win.  Winning a bronze medal in one competition, he aims for gold in his strongest competition – the 10 meter platform.  Training for sixteen years brings him to a moment that would last only sixteen seconds – from the time he begins the dive to finding out his score.  A score which would bring a perfect score from one judge and thus earning him the title of being the first Asian American to win an Olympic Gold medal.

A very inspiring story that ends with his father’s words:  “In America, you can achieve anything if you set your heart to it.”

A short video that features an interview with Sammy Lee:

There is so much going for this book.  It is a story of immigration, prejudice and discrimination, dreams, determination, practice, perseverance, struggle, and triumph.  But this is no story. This is life.  And an inspiring one at that.  This picture book and Sammy Lee’s story deserves to be in the classroom, the library, the home, and in a child’s hands.

Links of interest:  Paula Yoo website.  Dom Lee is also the illustrator of the following picture books which I’ve reviewed: Baseball Saved Us,  Be Water, My Friend:  The Early Years of Bruce Lee, and A Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story.
Genre: Non-fiction Picture book, approx ages 9-12.
Publisher: Lee and Low Books.  April 1, 2005
Hardcover, 32 pages.  ISBN  158430247X
Source:  Review copy
Sixteen Years in Sixteen Seconds: The Sammy Lee Story is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

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