Yahoo! My first day of summer vacation. I had "quality time" with Sophie this a.m. - she curled up on me to get her neck scratched while I read for a bit. A wonderful quiet house, but I have major cleaning to do before we have friends over for BBQ chicken on Sunday. A toddler can do a real number on your bookcases, etc. He loves books, but taking them out of the book shelves is the most fascinating part. :-)

Just finished Karen Blumenthal's Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX, the Law that Changed the Future of Girls in America. Blumenthal also wrote the 2003 Sibert Award winner - Six Days in October: The Stock Market Crash of 1929. She has a way of writing about a "dry" subject and giving it life. The inclusion of cartoons related to Title IX and girls in sports are a visual treat to break up the text, along with the scorecard of girls vs. boys involvement in sports through the years, beginning with 1971-72. Also included are player profiles and other boxes with supplemental information that give this book appeal, even for the reader who only explores the boxed information and the statistics. This is a dream book for librarians as it has all the extras we want - time line, then and now quotes, extensive source notes, print and online list of age appropriate further resources, a selected bibliography, and the necessary index. The only complaint I have about this book is that it tends to support the false impression that Title IX is only about sports in schools. One of the major impacts of Title IX is the increase of female doctors, lawyers, etc. I wish more of the profiles were on women and their role in once all male careers - engineering, law, etc. - along with the athletes. Nevertheless, this is a gotta have for any upper elementary or MS collection.

Now to take on the challenge of cleaning up this mess!