Courage to Soar (with Bonus Content)

jadegotedalahe - "Courage to Soar" is a non-fiction biography written about Simone Biles and her story. The author of this book is Michelle Burford, the cover designer is Ron Huizinga, and the interior designer is Denise Froelich. This book has 250 pages to read. It is about Simone Biles and all the challenges she has faced to get to the top as an Olympic gymnast. She needed to learn how to overcome these challenges. With this, she followed her goal and achieved great things. Simone Biles learned that with determination and confidence, you can achieve any goal. This can help readers realize this as well. Having a rough life, it was hard for Simone. For example, she had to be separated from her siblings and she had ADHD (Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) which is a condition where one has trouble focusing. Simone needed to get over these obstacles and hardships throughout her life. Did Simone overcome these struggles? Of course! This lesson has led her to all of her success and has improved her life majorly. The lesson is if you work hard and don't stop, you can be unstoppable. After all, you are learning this from a four-time gold medalist, I'm pretty positive she knows what she is talking about. Although, this book can be very inspiring, when you read it, it tends to get boring and unpleasant. This book talks more about her childhood leading up to her success with random facts. Only towards the end of the book, it starts talking about her achievements. This can get boring because you just read on and on waiting to come across the interesting parts. For this reason, I wouldn't recommend this book to people who like thrilling stories, but I would recommend this book to people who would like to get motivated and improve their life. In further explanation, this story can be extraordinary to some but displeasing to readers who seek action-packed books. This story answers a lot of questions I've had, but missed one. I would like to ask Simone Biles if when you sometimes get very stubborn and have an attitude towards people and coaches, do you ever feel bad about the way you treat them?

March 1, 2017

Gr 7 Up-Nineteen-year-old Biles, Olympic gold medalist and the most decorated U.S. gymnast of all time, takes readers along her journey to the podium in this memoir. After spending her early childhood in and out of foster care, Biles was adopted by her biological grandparents. She began her gymnastics training at the age of six after a field trip to Bannon's Gymnastix, where the coaches quickly discovered that she "had what it took to go all the way." Biles describes not only her gymnastics training and career but also her personal life, including her grandmother's death, the difficult decisions she made in order to balance school and gymnastics, her "bratty period" in her early teens, and her love for her car, with its zebra-print interior. In recent years, Biles has won three consecutive world championship titles followed by her team gold and individual wins at the 2016 Olympics. Biles's narration is effervescent, showing her to be, as her brother says, "a goofy and down-to-earth kid." The tone is conversational and includes casual phrases such as "if you can't already tell" and "just kidding." She expresses appreciation for her family, friends, teammates, and coaches and frequently credits God and her faith for her success. One slight caveat: readers without background knowledge about gymnastics may not find the terminology to be adequately explained. VERDICT Essential for libraries serving tween and teen gymnastics fans.-Magdalena Teske, Naperville Public Library, IL

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