Illus. in full color with black-and-white photos. "Covers not only the story of Robinson's prowess and his problems as the first black man to play in the major leagues, but also the story of the rise and fall of black baseball and some of its star players and managers. Nicely geared by vocabulary, sentence length, and print size to the primary grades audience."-- Bulletin, Center for Children's Books.   Grade 2-4-- A more indicative title for this book might be The Story of All-Black Baseball and Jackie Robinson, as only two of the six chapters deal with the life of Jackie Robinson, the first black to play major league baseball. The writing style is consistent with the other books in this series: choppy and unimaginative. Unremarkable color illustrations and standard black-and-white photographs are sprinkled liberally throughout the book. David Adler's Jackie Robinson: He Was the First (Holiday, 1989) is a more interesting biography aimed at the same reading level. That book also includes a table of contents, a list of important dates, an index, and biographical information about the author and illustrator--features not included in O'Connor's book. The front inside cover of O'Connor's book does have an area where the reader is encouraged to write his or her name and the date after he has finished reading the book. --Tom S. Hurlburt, Minneapolis Public Library Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. Illus. in full color with black-and-white photos. "Covers not only the story of Robinson's prowess and his problems as the first black man to play in the major leagues, but also the story of the rise and fall of black baseball and some of its star players and managers. Nicely geared by vocabulary, sentence length, and print size to the primary grades audience."-- Bulletin, Center for Children's Books.   Illus. in full color with black-and-white photos. "Covers not only the story of Robinson's prowess and his problems as the first black man to play in the major leagues, but also the story of the rise and fall of black baseball and some of its star players and managers. Nicely geared by vocabulary, sentence length, and print size to the primary grades audience."--"Bulletin, Center for Children's Books. Jim O’Connor is a children’s author. His books include Jackie Robinson and the Story of All-Black Baseball , Let’s Hear it for the Shrumps! , The Puck Stops Here! , The Ghost in Tent 19 , Call Me Gretzky,  and many books in the popular Who Was? series.