S. H. Burchard

This book is a biography about Dorothy Hamill, an Olympic, gold medalist, ice-skater. The book follows her ice-skating career very well, detailing her emotions and physical moves when she is on the ice. It lists each competition she has been in, along with her final scores she receives, including her winning the gold medal in the Olympics and the Outstanding Young Woman of the Year award, which was presented to her by First Lady Betty Ford.

I enjoyed reading this biography of Dorothy; it was very detailed about every skating competition she had, listing not only where she was competing, but all of the special moves that she performs. It also includes, in Dorothy’s own words, how she felt before and after each competition. The biography didn’t detail much of the other areas of her life, just the ice-skating details, although from reading what details were printed, I found her to be a very shy, yet humble person, who took her career serious, and gave her very best performance no matter how small or large the audience. The illustrations were of course, actual photos of her on the ice, and some of her winning moments as well. The illustrations in this biography gave it more of a relation-type feeling, like the reader can actually relate to the subject, making it feel like the reader is actually there when it happened.

For my class project, I would have my students pick any person, whether the person is a famous athlete, movie star, singer, family member, or friend and have each student list as many known details of that person that he or she can list, as if they were writing their own biography of that person. Another project would be to send a homework assignment home with each student. The assignment would consist of an easy, fill in the blank questionnaire, which each student would fill out while interviewing one of his or her parents, or grandparents. The questions would consist of simple things like favorite food, color, hobbies, etc. The students would then present their biographies to the class the next day.… (mer)