the Olympics | South Sound Book Review Council

This slim book succinctly describes many of the greatest Olympic records and athletes of all times. Exciting photographs punctuate the bits of information, which will be jut enough for those sports buffs that don’t want to wade through lots of information in a larger reference book. Many of the athletes and sports will be familiar (example: Michael Phelps and swimming). But, some will be new to middle grade readers (example: coxless pair rowers Hamish Bond and Erick Murray).

Typical nonfiction features are present: table of contents, glossary, index. And potentially unfamiliar words are bolded. Olympic Records is part of the Blastoff! Discovery: Incredible Sports Records series and is a nice addition to those collections that need a boost of new material. Additional selection

The Flip Side is the story of a 15 yr. old sophomore girl who is an excellent gymnast training for the Olympic team. Having been home schooled during her younger years to allow the flexibility for training and competition travel, Charlie longs for a more normal high school social experience. The transition to high school is filled with fun teen events, including the upcoming Prom, but Charlie is afraid to reveal the highly competitive sports side of her life. She makes up excuses for missing study sessions, social events, even dates. This sets up numerous conflicts, and is further complicated when she meets Bobby, a star wrestler on the school team.

The Flip Side shows the dedication and extremely hard work involved in athletics at the pre-Olympic level, and contains good lessons about dedication and hard work, etc. What is hard to reconcile for the reader is why Charlie doesn’t relish in her accomplishments and let her classmates and teachers know of her athletic life outside of school. Her boyfriend, Bobby, gets plenty of praise for his accomplishments on the wrestling team. But she doesn’t even want to tell him, the one person at school most likely to identify with her goals.

This incongruity is what detracts from an otherwise enjoyable teenage sports / love story. I would like to further investigate the school experiences of the author, Shawn Johnson, who won a gold medal in the 2008 summer Olympics. It is possible that there is reason why an elite teenage gymnast wouldn’t want her school community to know of her accomplishments and goals, but it doesn’t make sense to me as a reader of her book.