Epic Athletes--Stephen Curry

Starred review from March 15, 2019
Grades 4-6 *Starred Review* Growing up, Stephen Curry enjoyed playing baseball, football, and golf as well as basketball, but with his father playing for the Charlotte Hornets, Steph had NBA dreams. While his small size limited his defensive capability, he made up for it with quickness, coordination, and constant practice on basic skills. His coach at Davidson College helped him realize his potential. After he joined the Golden State Warriors in 2009, early injuries preceded a steadily rising arc of prominence for both Curry and his team, which won the NBA championship in 2015, 2017, and 2018. This biography discusses Curry's gifts, his discipline, his personality, his outlook, his faith, his team-oriented style of play, and his accomplishments, from MVP honors to all-time shooting records. The occasional full-page grayscale illustration celebrates an event or creates a narrative through a sequence of pictures, most notably in a 12-page feature, Instant Replay, showing the dramatic final seconds of a 2016 game. A columnist for Yahoo! Sports, Wetzel knows how to organize the facts and tell a good story. His insights into high school, collegiate, and professional basketball, along with his use of well-chosen quotes from insiders, make this book an unusually informative and enjoyable sports biography for young readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)