In 1956, Jackie Robinson retired from professional baseball, a year after he helped the Brooklyn Dodgers win the World Series against the New York Yankees. Robinson played for the Dodgers for nine seasons, breaking the color barrier that would soon place at least one African American player on each Major League Baseball team.

For Robinson’s family, his retirement meant having their father at home in Stamford, Connecticut, in a house next to a lake on six acres. In the summertime, Robinson’s three children enjoyed swimming and boating on the lake. Robinson, however, remained on shore. Although he had lettered in four sports at UCLA—football, baseball, basketball, and track and field—Robinson never learned how to swim. So on a cold winter’s day, when his children asked if they could skate on the lake, Robinson knew he had to overcome his fear and test the ice himself.

When Robinson’s daughter, Sharon, was asked to write a children’s book about her father, she knew that Testing the Ice, was the story she wanted to tell. “Metaphorically, that’s exactly what he did in baseball,” she said. “He stepped out as the first so that other black and Hispanic players could, too.”

Testing the Ice is a children’s book that will appeal to all ages. Sharon’s prose skillfully combines the story of Jackie Robinson the baseball player with Jackie Robinson the father. Kadir Nelson’s illustrations—many done from actual photographs supplied by the author—convey both the action of the baseball scenes and the warmth of the family moments.

The opening drawing, one familiar to both Dodger and Yankee fans, shows Robinson stealing home in the first game of the 1955 World Series. (To this day, Yogi Berra, the Yankee catcher who was blocking the plate, maintains that Robinson was out). The following pages bring the story to the family home where Robinson spent quality time with his children and their friends, who never tired hearing his baseball stories. “How our friends loved playing inside our house!” Sharon writes. “And while we took it all for granted, our friends made a big fuss over Dad’s trophy room.”

She recounts how on a rainy Saturday morning over a game of Monopoly, her friends ask to hear about Robinson’s historic entry into baseball. In the next few pages, the captivated expressions Nelson has drawn on these youthful faces could represent young people today as they continue to be fascinated by Robinson’s accomplishments. According to his daughter, Robinson was a reluctant hero and a private man. But he was aware of his influence over young people and he never failed to engage them.

In the second half of the story, Robinson is like any dad, sitting in on a weekend afternoon reading the newspaper. When his children ask to go skating on the lake, he knows he needs to be the one to test the ice. When he walks out onto the frozen lake (Nelson’s illustrations here are museum quality), Sharon shouts, “Be careful!” and then grabbing her friend’s hand confesses, “I’m scared. My Dad can’t swim.”

Fortunately, the ice holds up and so does this heartwarming story. “That was Jackie Robinson. And that was my Dad. Big, heavy, out there alone on the lake, testing the ice to be sure it would be safe for us.”

Jackie Robinson’s feats on the baseball field are well documented. Now his daughter has given us a glimpse into what he was like as a father. He was a hero to a nation, but perhaps his greatest accomplishment was being a hero to those closest to him. And that is a legacy worth celebrating and emulating.

Testing the Ice: A True Story About Jackie Robinson
By Sharon Robinson
Illustrations by Kadir Nelson
Published by Scholastic
(Photo above of Kadir Nelson and Sharon Robinson)