Category: Gloucester Sports

The Boston Marathon had been taking place for 70 years when Bobbi Gibb, a white woman, steps illegally to the starting line in 1966, a hoodie covering her hair. Her road there is strewn with the land mines of bias, everything from “So unladylike” to the official comments on the rejection to her application: “Women cannot run marathons. It’s against the rules.” Poletti and Yee neatly evoke the joy some find in running, simply running. Gibb “ran with her pack, going higher and higher, / the world whooshing by, like the wind in the fire.” Such couplets are found every few pages, the last four words the refrain. Readers gain a sense of the experience through Chapman’s artwork, the light-footed energy of the watercolors slipping outside the pen’s fine line, a veil of wind trailing behind Gibb. Halfway through the race her ruse is up. She is boiling in her hoodie and confides to a fellow marathoner, a black man, that she is afraid of ejection. “We won’t let anyone throw you out; it’s a free road.” Well-told and illustrated, Gibb’s story speaks to not only women’s fight for equality, but the power of community.”