Book Review: Jayson Tatum by Jon M. Fishman
Many children in the preschool and elementary school age are just starting to follow professional sports. Often, they understandably gravitate to the best/most famous players and a whole industry has been created to cater to the market of young sports fans with biographies of high profile athletes. A recent addition to this canon is “Jayson Tatum” by Jon M. Fishman which was released in 2022. These books are challenging to write for current athletes as their careers may quickly progress with new milestones, but they can provide an interesting snapshot in time of both an athlete's biography and their accomplishments in the moment the book was written.
The book starts off with a colorful table of contents that is eye-catching. A nice touch in the table of contents is the section which features many photos of Tatum’s time when Tatum joins the Celtics is highlighted in Green. The first section of the book titled “A Fighting Chance” gives some basic facts of Tatum’s life and then makes an interesting choice to start things off with the 2020 Eastern Conference Finals and Tatum’s great play in game 5 to keep the series alive.
The book then shifts to Tatum’s early life going to college classes with his mom, practicing basketball and dreaming of being the next Kobe. Overall, the book then goes on to summarize Tatum’s rise to the NBA and there are some fun anecdotes sprinkled in including one about how Tatum’s mom would give him surprise “interviews” using a hairbrush like a microphone to help him practice talking to the media. As any Celtic fan will tell you Tatum’s son nicknamed Deuce has become almost as big of a celebrity as Tatum himself so Deuce fans would be heartened to know that he gets a full page devoted to him. This will probably be of interest to young readers as well who might see Deuce on TV and be able to relate to him. The book also includes a glossary of basketball terms that will be helpful to young readers and or their caregivers/teachers who are not basketball fans to help them understand along with statistics as well as sources and links for further reading. High quality photos from Tatum’s time growing up, his time at Duke, and with the Celtics are inserted throughout the book. Lastly, the book circles back to the 2020 Eastern Conference finals which the Celtics lost. This in itself can probably be a good lesson to young children about dealing with losing and learning from that.
However, I am hoping as a Celtics fan that this book gets updated in the future with more chapters about Tatum eventually leading the Celtics to the NBA title. Overall, this was a well crafted book that hit on all the important aspects of Tatum’s life that any young basketball fan but specifically Celtics/Tatum fans will enjoy.
