Review by Frank Plowright
Mia Hamm may be known to American audiences, but her profile is far lower elsewhere. She’s a footballer who’s captained the US women’s national team to two World Cup wins and two Olympic gold medals. That’s quite ironic considering she was named after ballerina Mia Slavenska, while considerable strength of will is indicated by her having to wear corrective shoes when very young to compensate for a birth defect.
Karlin Gray’s contraction of Hamm’s life is intended as inspirational, showing how constant hard work was needed despite natural talent for her to become the youngest US women’s soccer international at fifteen. Because it’s natural in the USA, overseas readers might be puzzled on the concentration on international games, but club football doesn’t seem to have been played throughout most of Hamm’s career, and promising players were filtered directly into the national team. That’s what’s most strongly featured, although once Hamm joins, the “and friends” aspect of the title is punted to the foreground in what becomes a statistical run through of communal achievement.
Whether as a child or an adult, Micheline Hess shows Hamm as a bundle of energy charging about the garden or the football pitch in artwork that follows the script in requiring lots of flags. It also needs lots of team stickers, as pretty well every tournament team Hamm played in is shown in full. There’s no inclination to show football in any kind of realistic terms, exemplified on the cover with Hamm’s boot shown studs up on the ball, just a succession of sometimes comical illustrations of a foot somehow connecting with a ball. The winning goal in a penalty shootout is drawn as a player kicking the ball way above the heads of the crowd. Anyone who knows anything about football is going to find some of the illustrations funny, and that’s not at all the intention.
As a biography this is slim. The tragedy of Hamm’s brother dying early is noted, but beyond her childhood there’s barely any mention of a personal life or friends outside the football team, and little about friendships in that circle. Other players are reduced to illustrations of stickers, goals and stats. What Hamm’s like other than being a winner is given no consideration, and you’ll learn very little about her that a book of statistics couldn’t tell you. By far the best section is the epilogue in which the women players take action over being paid so much less than the US men’s football team.
All in all, a great missed opportunity.
