I was eleven years old when the Magnificent 7 dominated the 1996 summer games—the perfect age to marvel over the mysterious creatures that are competitive gymnasts. So tiny. So powerful. So much glitter hairspray. My favorite Olympian was thirteen-year-old Dominique Moceanu. I read and re-read her autobiography (Dominique Moceanu: An American Champion) so many times that I ran my paperback copy quite ragged.

Lucky for young fans, Moceanu is back in the book business with a new middle-grade series, The Go-for-Gold Gymnasts (Disney-Hyperion, April), co-written with Alicia Thompson. Seemingly created specifically for eleven-year-old me, this series follows four young gymnasts who train together at a fictional elite gym in Texas, with each girl taking turns as protagonist, Babysitter’s Club style. In the first title, Winning Team, Britt is the new girl at the gym. Her new teammates give her the cold shoulder because she is a show-off with a perfect full double-twisting somersault—don’t you hate those? But with life lessons gleaned from To Kill a Mockingbird, Britt avoids becoming the Boo Radley of the Texas Twisters by taming her sassy, self-centered ways.

Along with the inner emotional struggles of tweendom, Winning Team also reveals those coveted details of gymnast-life that only Moceanu could provide: the superhuman training schedules, the bizarre and disgusting athletic rituals, the catty in-fighting. The characters also speak in thick gymnast-dialect—you might need to spend some time on YouTube learning the difference between a “full-in” and a “half-in, half-out”. And let’s not forget the requisite eating disorder plotline! Don’t worry: by the end of the book, everyone has regained health and attained a sense of team spirit, and you’ll be more than prepared to cheer on the newest pack of little 2012 USA competitors this summer.

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With the increasing momentum of the local food movement, a bevy of conscientious young parents are likely seeking media to further educate/indoctrinate their children. What better way to instruct your urban children in the true origins of their local, organic chicken dinner than with artist Julia Rothman’s Farm Anatomy: The Curious Parts and Pieces of Country Life (Storey, October)? Although published for adults, Farm Anatomy is little more than a hefty, hipster-friendly visual dictionary with a dash of farmer’s almanac, making it a good choice for the whole family to share. Rothman’s pen and ink illustrations are heavily hand-labeled, detailing every part of farm life from soil composition to the twenty-six distinct styles of rooster combs.

Rothman’s images can be a bit pastoral and rosy, but the book’s content doesn’t sugarcoat the realities of a working farm. One glance at the double-page spread full of archaic, frightening-looking “tools of the trade” makes me grateful that my urban existence does not require something called an “ear-notcher”.

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