By My Brother's Side Book

This was a real hit with Meade and with his classmates when I read it aloud to them. It touches on many important themes--perserverence, brotherly love, doing your homework, overcoming adversity and football. The writing isn't the most scintillating, but oh well. The fact that it's "a true story" and the subject matter--football. That's all it takes.

Native Virginians Ronde and Tiki Barber are identical twins (who were born small as many twins are--since Meade is small, I like the fact they mention these future NFL stars were small, too) who grew up to play football for UVA, 45 minutes down the road from Meade's school (a lot of the boys' parents went there, although the boys weren't born when they played there), then went on to play in the NFL. Most of the boys seemed not to be familiar with the Barbers, and this story, which was about Tiki breaking his leg as a child, seemed to appeal to the boys. The Barbers have written three more books about their childhood which I plan to get--the parents have to read to the class once a month at lunch and those books will get me through 3 more sessions.