Famous people have interesting personalities and usually lead interesting lives, but not all famous people are great too. Greatness needs a soundness of character combined with a dynamic personality, to be worthy of being remembered as one of the greatest in any field.

Heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali is, undoubtedly, boxing’s most celebrated athlete, and the book Who is Muhammad Ali, by James Buckley Jr, is a short, but informative biography specially designed for children to read.

The book narrates so many small and significant incidents that shaped his life. For instance, if Cassius Clay (his original birth name which he later changed on conversion to Islam) had not had his bicycle stolen when he was 12 years old, he probably would have not been a boxer, or such a famous one. He was so angry when he went to report the theft of his bike that the policeman, who was a part-time boxing coach, asked him to join his evening boxing classes to channalise his anger in a positive way.

Buckley writes in simple prose, yet he manages to bring to life that tale of the ‘Louisville Lip’, as Ali came to be known for his shocking statements, showy interviews and poems.

One thing particularly striking about this boxing legend is that when he strongly believed in something, he stood up for it, no matter what it would cost him personally.

He converted to Islam without caring for how it would affect his fame, he refused to join the army to fight the Vietnam War because he didn’t want to go and fight with people who had done nothing wrong to him, and he spoke up about the biased treatment blacks faced in America and elsewhere.

Perhaps his greatest fight would be with Parkinson’s disease, that he was diagnosed with soon after retiring from boxing. Ali shows us that there is no fight that is too difficult to win if you try hard enough. After he stopped fighting in the ring, he continued to fight around the world for others, for peace, equality and liberty, despite being very restricted by his crippling illness.

There are many pen drawings in the book that illustrate the story, but they don’t make the impact that coloured photographs would have done. Separate sections are devoted to things and people who play an important part in Ali’s life.

Over all, the life of a man as great as Ali needs to be known to all youngsters, to give them the right kind of heroes to look up to.

Let me end with these lines from the book, where Ali is telling a reporter how he wanted to be remembered: “As a black man who won the heavyweight title ... who treated everyone right. As a man who never looked down on those who looked up to him and who helped as many of his people as he could.... As a man who tried to unite people through the faith of Islam.”

Available at Paramount Books

Published in Dawn, Young World, October 28th, 2017