Meet 8 fantastic women who made sports more accessible to women and did some amazing achievements in sports!

So when I spotted this one at Library #4 I just had to bring it along. I have been a fan of Kate Pankhurst’s art and writing since 2013 brought Mariella Mystery (a series I am still hoping to get more books). I am generally not a sports girl myself (or at least not that much), but with those fun illustrations and the knowledge the writing style will be fun and the fact I love learning new things, I just had to pick it up!

In this one we meet 8 women who either had some amazing sport achievements or organised things to be more open for women, with all of them paving the way for women to do sports, to show the world that women can also do sports. Some I knew by name, some I knew because they are a bit more recent, like Simone Biles. And Junko Tabei, I read a Rebel Girls book about her in 2023. So I was eager to learn more about the two I knew and get to meet the ones I only knew by name or that were unknown to me. I was curious to see what sports achievements they had or what they did to make women’s sports more accessible. The book is chronological so we start with going way way back to ancient. We meet up with Cynisca a Spartan princess who was done with how women weren’t allowed to do sports and found a delightful loophole that had me clapping my hands! And the last person in the book is Simone Biles, one of the best gymnasts of the world!

It was great fun to read these stories of these girls, get to meet them, learn their motivations, see them kick-ass and do their thing even when things get tough, I loved reading about their sports achievements at many different events to a girl who just kept trying out new things and achieved greatness in all of them. Plus, see people like Cynisca and Alice Milliat make way for girls/women to do sports from figuring out loopholes to getting organised. I learned a whole lot of new things and I liked every moment of it. Sometimes sports books can be boring, and sure at times my mind glazed over a bit (though that may also be partly because I got so many fab books and my ADHD wanting to read them all in one go, haha), but in overall I had so much fun.

The illustrations and the way the book was designed was just so fun!

All in all, I would highly recommend this book to all! As for me, I am hoping that the library adds more of Kate Pankhurst’s books!