Women today play a major role in Olympic sports of all kinds.They can medal in any sport that male athletes can. 2012 marked the first year in world history that every competing country had at least one female athlete on its team, and America's female athletes' 29 gold medals outnumbered almost every other country's total gold medal count. But none of this would have been possible without pioneers like Babe Didrikson Zaharias. When Babe Didrikson Zaharias was a child, her goal was to be the greatest athlete who ever lived. Few people come as close to their childhood goals as Babe did. She was an All-American basketball player, an Olympic gold medalist in track and field, and a championship golfer who won eighty-two amateur and professional tournaments. She also mastered tennis, played exhibition baseball, and was an accomplished diver and bowler. The Associated Press elected her Woman Athlete of the Year six times and in 1950 named her Woman Athlete of the Half Century. Babe accomplished all of this at a time when most girls and women didn't take part in these sports. This insightful and well-researched biography from Newbery medalist Russell Freedman brings to life the woman who changed the world's perception of female athletes foreverBabe Didrikson Zaharias.