Get ready for the Winter Olympics with this great new middle grade book about Winter Olympians and Paralympians, which includes queer athletes in and beyond a section on “Olympic Pride.” Read on for my review—and a sneak peek at its adorable depiction of Canadian hockey superstars and spouses Marie-Philip Poulin and Laura Stacey (and their dog Arlo).
Kid Olympians: Winter: True Tales of Childhood from Champions and Game Changers (Quirk Books) follows author Robin Stevenson’s Kid Olympians: Summer, but here turns to the Winter Olympics, offering eight- to 10-page profiles of 18 featured athletes (plus a few one-page looks at some additional figures), with an emphasis on how their childhoods shaped them.
In accessible but never patronizing prose, Stevenson sketches the stories of her subjects’ childhoods, deftly setting the scene for each one and providing informative details, engaging quotes, and sometimes humorous anecdotes. We see these athletes making their marks early—but also facing early challenges, both personal and societal.
As in the previous volume, queer athletes are included—and Stevenson goes further here. The entire first section of the book is devoted to “Olympic Pride” and profiles four queer Olympians who have spoken up for LGBTQ equality: figure skaters Johnny Weir and Adam Rippon; para-Nordic skier, para ice hockey player, and (in the summer) wheelchair basketball player Cindy Ouellet; and snowboarder Callan Chythlook-Sifsof. Pairs figure skater Timothy LeDuc, the first openly nonbinary athlete to compete at the Winter Olympics, also gets a mention on a page that looks broadly at the number of LGBTQ Olympians and the barriers that transgender athletes continue to face in sports.
For the in-depth profiles, Stevenson shows how her subjects’ queer identities (and people’s responses to them) impacted them and how they chose to speak out for equality, but also appropriately shows that their queerness is only part of their story. She spends much more time on their overall journeys as athletes and on their intersectional identities. We see, for example, how Ouellet has also worked to expand para sports, to speak up about mental health and her struggles with depression, and to reduce childhood bullying. And Chythlook-Sifsof has worked to protect the environment and spoken against abuse of young athletes by coaches.
Queer athletes aren’t pigeonholed into that one section, either. Canadian hockey star Marie-Philip Poulin is in the section of “Powerful Women,” where, alongside tales of her athletic career, her engagement to teammate Laura Stacey gets a mention and a sweet image. (The couple are now married.)
Two other sections of the book look at athletes who broke racial/ethnic, and other barriers and at additional skaters who had to “overcome obstacles and face their fears” before becoming Olympians. More than half of the athletes profiled are people of color, a much greater percentage than in the actual Winter Games—but all the more reason that these profiles are necessary, offering important representation to today’s young athletes.
Stevenson’s prose is as clear and engaging as always, creating lively and engaging portraits rather than dry biographical sketches, while Steinfeld’s illustrations bring a cartoon-y charm to the subjects’ lives on and off the rinks and slopes. Get this book in advance of the upcoming Games—but keep it for its ongoing inspiration. Highly recommended.
Also check out Stevenson and Steinfeld’s other queer-inclusive (but not exclusive) volumes in the series:
