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froydis's review
3.0
An interesting story, but a tad on the preachy side. I also didn't like the illustrations as much - everyone was kind of short and fat and choppy looking. But a nice story overall.
upstatelibrarygal's review
5.0
My 7 year old (and me!) loved this story of how "Trudy" overcame many obstacles to swim the English Channel. We especially loved the details and illustrations that added to our understanding of the experience. Fantastic page of notes from the author at the end of the book add to the story.
claudiaswisher's review
4.0
Another woman whose accomplishments we've not heard of unless we are in her field. Gertrude Ederle nearly drowned when she was a child, so her dad worked to teach her to swim. She found her element. She started swimming competitively at 15, and the next year, she set a record swimming from Manhattan to Sandy Hook...she bested all the men who'd swum that route. She then took on the big one: the English Channel. On her second try, she also beat every man's record...She got a ticker-tape parade in New York, and it appears that the world promptly forgot all about her. The notes in the back tell of the toll her life took -- she lost most of her hearing -- maybe because of measles, maybe because of her Channel swims. She fell and spent FOUR YEARS in a cast, and was confined to a wheel chair. But she taught herself to walk again. She spent years teaching deaf children to swim...I'm sorry that was not included in the picture book.
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