Today is Wilma Rudolph's birthday; she was born on June 23, 1940 near Clarksville, Tennesee, the twentieth of twenty-two children (I love this detail).  Wilma was the first American woman to win three gold medals in an Olympic Games (Rome, 1960); she defeated polio and prejudice to get there.  We re-read Wilma Unlimited: How Wilma Rudolph Became the World's Fastest Woman by Kathleen Krull; illustrated by David Diaz (Harcourt, 1996) today in her honor; she became one of Leo's heroes (and mine, too) when we first read this book before the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.  It's an amazing story; well worth reading before this summer's Olympic Games in Beijing, too.

[See more Nonfiction Monday posts at Picture Book of the Day.]