History has many layers. Dresses can have many layers. But whereas history plays out, it is hard to play most sports or ride a bicycle in dresses. Especially the outfits that many women athletes would wear before some enterprising women decided to change things up. This Skirt Won’t Work!: How Women Athletes Changed Their Clothes and Changed the Game by Jennifer Cooper and illustrator Eva Byrne follows how tennis went from a long skirt to a 1920s fashion statement. How women hockey players would change the look of their skirts. How a bicyclist could go faster with a form of pants. 
Read via an online reader copy, I think in December 2025 I will be finding copies to give to a few people as holiday gifts. While for the aged five and up, it can be adapted to most ages. It is slightly on the younger side, but is packed full of goodness. Names we know, might now and new ones (cyclist Kittie Knox, swimmer Annette Kellerman, tennis player Suzanne Lenglen, Albertine LePensee and her Canadian hockey teammates) will come together and show how sports is not just the game, but how you look doing it. 
And part of that look comes from the illustrations. They are cute, quirky, not too busy, but not overloaded with details. Things come together in a positive look that gives what the story needs. The artist’s biography says that Byrne’s work is filled with fun, elegance and whimsy. This perfectly pairs with the text of Cooper, making something familiar (sports, women’s history) but also new and fresh as well.