By Deloris Jordan, Roslyn M. Jordan
Before he was the greatest, Michael Jordan was the shortest boy on the court, and this is the story his own mother tells of how he stopped wishing he were taller and started working.
Young Michael loves basketball more than anything, but he's the smallest boy in the neighborhood games, and the bigger children let him know it. He comes home aching to be taller, sure that height is the only thing standing between him and his dream. So his mother gives him a secret: put salt in your shoes and say a prayer every night, and you'll grow. Michael does it faithfully, and while he waits to shoot up, his father quietly teaches him the real lesson, that practice and heart will take him further than inches ever could. Written by Michael Jordan's own mother and sister, with breathtaking paintings by Kadir Nelson.
Your child has decided they're too small, too slow, too something to ever be good at the thing they love, and this is the book for them. It meets that feeling head-on, because young Michael feels it too, and then it hands them the actual answer: you don't wait to be built for your dream, you work toward it. Coming from Jordan's own family gives it real weight, and Kadir Nelson's paintings are so gorgeous your child will want to live inside them. A short, warm read that leaves a child believing effort is the thing that counts, from a name they already know.