Hurley, Michael. World’s Greatest Olympians.

Hurley, Michael. World’s Greatest Olympians.   Capstone Publishers, 2012.    32p. $29.00  ISBN 978-1-4109-4122-0 elem  VG-BNes       

     Exciting biographical information, a vivid layout, and outstanding photographs combine to create a winning book about international record-breaking Olympic stars.  Readers of all ages will enjoy this book!  It has so many great features that the reader will turn each page eagerly.  These features include highlights of the Olympic stars’ achievements (presented in the colors bold sky blue and warm orange), Olympic fact files about each star in grass green, and photograph captions in white on a black background.  The layout is without a doubt one of the strengths of this book!  Another strength is the quality of the photographs, which show tremendous features of the Olympic stars down to the musculature, posture and determination of athletes like swimmer Michael Phelps and marathon runner Abebe Bikila.  Olympic viewers will never forget the remarkable win by Abebe, despite a setback in the form of a surgery six weeks before the 1964 Olympics.  The controversial 1988 Olympics brought victory to Carl Lewis when Ben Johnson tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs.  Everyone watched as Ben Johnson became a world-renowned hero when he won the 200-meter and 400-meter running events in 1996.  Other famous Olympians who are highlighted in this book include Jesse Owens, the American who showed Hitler that German athletes were not the best in the world, Fanny Blankers-Koen, Dutch high-jumper and runner who showed the world what a housewife could do, and Steve Redgrave, a British rower who was knighted by the Queen of England for his achievements.  One slight drawback is that the reader will wish the author had included more biographical data about each Olympian, but since his purpose is simply to introduce the reader to each star, he has achieved his goal.  New vocabulary words appear in bold type, and there is a helpful glossary at the end of the book that is preceded by a list of interesting facts about winners of the Winter Olympics as well as Paralympics.  A list of web sites and an index conclude the book.

     The Olympics is a series that includes a variety of topics, including great moments in Olympic history, the 2012 London Olympics, the World of Olympics, and high-tech Olympics.  Each book includes a page of data, action photographs and short snippets of Olympic fact, along with the necessary charts of records, and anecdotal information about variety of stars 

Subject: Olympics

Martha Squaresky

 

Night Olympic Team by Caroline Hatton

Hatton, Caroline. Night Olympic team, the
Boyds Mills, 2008, $17.95, 978-1-59078-566-9

Explores doping in sports and discusses the efforts of scientists and officials to test athletes and prevent the use of performance enhancing drugs.
At the Olympics, winning athletes are not the only ones who get the gold. There is another Olympic team that does not compete but who nonetheless get the gold anyway. This team is the Night Olympic Team whose job is to monitor and test the urine of the athletes for banned performance enhancing drugs. Hatton states that the night Olympic team is like a group of custodians - keepers of a key Olympic ideal of honest competition. Hatton, a scientist, was a member of the team since its inception in 1984. In this fascinating title, she focuses on the events of the 2002 Winter Olympics, during which time several athletes surrendered their medals due to positive drug tests. Hatton explains the science of drug testing in a conversational manner, beginning with the development of a blood booster medicine, NESP. NESP was developed by the Amgen Corporation for illnesses that cause people to have fewer red blood cells, yet athletes quickly realized that it would benefit them as well, boosting their endurance. Since NESP became available five months before the Olympics, athletes were confident that a test for the drug would not be available. Unbeknownst to the athletes, there was a method for testing NESP usage. Fact boxes provide additional information; color photos nicely balance the text. Includes a glossary, author’s note, resources and an index. Although the focus of the drug scandal is on the 2002 Olympics, this is still a timely topic that will interest students, especially in an Olympic year. RZ