A review by mrskatiefitz
Winning Team by Alicia Thompson, Dominique Moceanu

3.0

Spirited prankster Brittany (Britt) Morgan is also a skilled gymnast. When she moves to a new town to start training at a bigger and better gym, she finds it difficult to adjust to the serious attitude, intense competition, and unfriendly faces of her new gymnastics team. Not only does she offend one of the girls by performing a move the other girl has not yet mastered, she also uncovers an eating disorder, makes a girl cry when trying to prank her, and finds herself struggling to impress her new coach.

I am usually not crazy about children’s books written by celebrities, but there is something appealing about a book about a gymnastics team written by an Olympic gymnast. It’s clear from early on in Britt’s story that Dominique Moceanu has lived many of these experiences firsthand. The details surrounding the gym, the various moves the girls perform, and even the tension between the girls also come across as authentic, and the details, especially, got me interested in the world of gymnastics, and therefore, in Britt’s story.

The plot wasn’t the most exciting, and included some cliches. If a book involves gymnastics, figure skating, or dancing, I always expect an eating disorder to show up, and that story line crops up almost immediately. I’ve also seen sports rivalries between girls in other books I’ve reviewed, such as McKenna (which is also about a gymnast), and Faith and the Camp Snob. It was very easy to predict what would happen between Britt and the other girls because cattiness among girls is such a common go-to tween plot.

I think a more skilled author might tell a more interesting story, but Moceanu has the unique advantage of having been an Olympic gymnast, so for girls who are aspiring gymnasts themselves, her perspective and knowledge of particular details will be the draw, not the storytelling. I did wish for some more character development, and some more information about Britt’s previous life and her friendship with her best friend, Dionne, but since this is apparently the first book in a series, I have a feeling some of those things might be revealed in later volumes.

All in all, I think Winning Team accomplishes what it sets out to do. It provides girls interested in competitive gymnastics with a fictionalized peek into that world. I’m not sure girls without this interest would be as excited about the story, but Britt is an engaging enough character that any reader will latch onto her and follow her story to find out what happens.