Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX: The Law That Changed the Future of Girls in America by Karen Blumenthal

Bibliography
Blumenthal, Karen. 2005. Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX: The Law That Changed the Future of Girls in America. New York: New York. Atheneum Books for Young Readers. ISBN 0689859570

Summary
In Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX: The Law That Changed the Future of Girls in America Blumenthal includes the injustices of many female athletes to how women in politics helped introduce, pass and enforce Title IX.

Critical Analysis
What would you say if someone told you your daughter could not play sports because she doesn’t need to build character? When she graduates from college with a law degree she can only teach but not practice law because she is a woman. Karen Blumenthal’s Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX, answers these and many other questions in an informative survey style book. The photographs, cartoons, newspaper and magazine clippings keep the heavily factual book interesting. Each chapter either focuses on female athletes or influential woman throughout the women’s rights movement and includes interesting female player profiles such as Mia Hamm and Billie Jean King. Although the split sentences during the course of the text create a bit of confusion at times the overall information found throughout is priceless.

Review Excerpt(s)
Jane Addams Children’s Book Award, 2006
Booklist-“ As in Six Days in October (2002), a compelling overview of the 1929 stock market crash and a financial primer, Wall Street Journal editor Blumenthal uses specific facts and fascinating personal stories to give readers a wide view of history. Here, the author looks at American women's evolving rights by focusing on the history and future of Title IX, which bans sex discrimination in U.S. education...”

Kirkus-“ The history of the small but wildly influential amendment known as Title IX receives a thoughtful, enlightening and inspiring treatment from the Sibert Honor-winning Blumenthal...”

Library Media Collection-“ Before the time that Donna de Varona won the gold in the Olympics and made the cover of Sports Illustrated, or Billy Jean King played Bobby Riggs, the battle for equality in the treatment of the sexes had been fought on several fronts. The warriors for the cause and the skirmishes leading up to the victory of Title IX are the subjects of this book...”

Connections
*Women Athletes
*Sex discrimation in sports
*Women’s rights throughout the centuries.