As a girl Babe Didrikson was a tomboy, ever ready to fight if someone called her by her real name, Mildred. She grew up in Beaumont, Texas, where she won a marble tournament when she was only eight years old. She was the only girl entered in the contest, but she won just the same.

Once after a circus came to Beaumont, she and her brothers and sisters built a trapeze and practiced doing aerial stunts in a tree. Momma was worried because she thought that Babe might fall and hurt herself, but Poppa said, “Babe will be all right. It’s the tree I’m not sure will survive.”

Poppa was right. Babe was not concerned with the tree, but with mastering daring acts in the air. She was determined to succeed, and would work for weeks or months to master one particular feat or skill. When she made up her mind to learn something, she let nothing interfere.

If Babe couldn’t practice sports with girls, she practiced with boys. Later she became a member of a famous girls’ basketball team in Dallas, Texas.

In Dallas, Babe joined a track team sponsored by the company where she worked. In 1932, the peak year of her track career, she entered the Amateur Athletic Union meet in Chicago and won six out of eight events which she entered. Next, she took part in the Olympic Games in Los Angeles, where she won two events and placed second in another.

After her tremendous success in track events, Babe decided to take up golf, which she practiced with great determination. In a few years she became recognized as the greatest woman golfer in the world. Once she won seventeen important golf tournaments in a row, including both the American and British Women’s Amateur championships.

No woman has ever equaled Babe Didrickson’s record in the field of sports, and probably never will. She possessed an insatiable love for physical activity, particularly if it involved skillful performance. Moreover, she possessed a perpetual desire and determination to succeed and to win.

This unusual book has been written by Lena Young de Grummond and Lynn de Grummond Delaune. Every child will be thrilled with the fascinating story of this American girl who achieved so much and rose to such heights in the field of sports.

From the dust jacket