"We are the Ship: The Story of Negro Baseball" by Kadir Nelson

This book was awesome!  If you'd like to learn more about Black baseball athletes and the history of American baseball in general, this middle-grade nonfiction book will give you a great overview.  If you've seen Ken Burns' documentary Baseball, you'll be familiar with some of the names here, but I expect that you still will learn quite a bit of new info from it.  I certainly did!

I feel like most people only know about Jackie Robinson being the first Black baseball player to break the color barrier, but not about all the other Black baseball players who came before him.  I myself know Robinson's story pretty well -- I really love his autobiography, I Never Had it Made, and the biopic 42 (2013) with the late Chadwick Boseman playing Jackie Robinson.  So I loved the chapter that told some of his story in this, but I also loved that it did not spend the whole time talking about him, because Robinson's story is not the whole story.

Not only does Kadir Nelson tell this history in an engaging way, using a first-person voice to pull the reader close, but his breathtaking full-page illustrations fill this book to bursting with wonderful visuals too.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG.  No bad words or objectionable content, though it does mention that some players would curse or chase women or smoke or drink.