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The Whole Picture
So You Want To Be A Professional Athlete offers young readers insight into becoming a professional athlete, focusing on talent, discipline, and handling the inevitable pressure. Why was this an important book for you to write?
Because the dominant story kids are handed about professional athletes is almost all highlight reel — the game-winning shot, the gold medal, the 10 seconds that make the broadcast — and almost none of the 10 years behind those 10 seconds. I wanted to write the book that lives behind the camera. The 5 AM alarms. The ice baths. The thousand quiet repetitions a coach asks for to get one motion automatic. The work nobody films.
I also wanted to push back, gently, on a phrase I think hurts a lot of young athletes: “natural talent.” The book makes the argument as plainly as I could that the athletes who last aren’t necessarily the most naturally gifted. They’re the ones who take the whole job seriously — recovery, sleep, nutrition, mental preparation, the parts no one applauds. Talent gets you to the starting line. Discipline gets you to the finish. That’s a truer story, and I think it’s a kinder one, because it tells a kid that what they can control is what actually matters.
One of the book’s strengths is its honesty about injuries, routine, and the short length of many sports careers. Why was it important to show those realities?
Because a children’s book that hides those things isn’t really written for the kids; it’s written for the adults who don’t want to disappoint them. I think kids can hold the whole picture, and I think they’re better served when we trust them with it.
So the book tells them the average NFL career is about three and a third years. It tells them careers can end in a single moment of a single race — and then it tells them the Derek Redmond story, where a hamstring tears at the Olympic semifinal and the runner finishes the race anyway, on one leg, with his father’s arm around his shoulders. It tells them Simone Biles withdrew from a final she was expected to win because something inside her body was wrong, and that this was the most professional choice she could have made.
What I want the young reader to take from this is not a warning. It’s an inheritance. Sports give a person something rare: a daily relationship with honest feedback. The clock, the score, the tape from yesterday’s practice — none of them flatter you, and none of them lie. A child who grows up inside that kind of feedback learns early what most adults spend decades trying to learn: how to see themselves clearly, how to take in hard information without falling apart, how to separate effort from outcome and keep showing up to both. That self-knowledge is the real gift of the work, and it travels with the athlete long after the uniform comes off. I wanted kids to see that whole, because the trophy is the smallest part of what they would actually be earning.
The book also has a page about retirement that I’m proud of. Almost every career book ends at the peak; this one walks a few steps further, to the empty stadium and the question of what comes next. I wanted children to understand that an athletic career ending in your 30s is not life-ending. It is the beginning of a second act that the first act has been quietly preparing you for the whole time. The discipline, the resilience under pressure, the ability to be coached, the habit of showing up before dawn when nobody is watching — none of that disappears when the career does. It becomes the foundation for whatever comes next, whether that is coaching, building a business, raising a family, returning to school, or something nobody, including the athlete, can yet imagine.
How did you approach explaining sports psychology, pressure, and mental preparation in a way that younger readers could connect with?
I tried to give them the actual vocabulary. Flow state. The prefrontal cortex going quiet so trained instinct can take over. Visualization. Pre-performance routines. Body intelligence — the ability to tell the difference between productive soreness and the early signal of injury. Once a child has those words, they can describe experiences they’ve already been having on the soccer field or at the piano bench but didn’t have language for.
I also leaned hard on the idea that the mental side isn’t separate from the physical side. It is the physical side, at the level where competitors are most evenly matched. In the 100-meter dash, gold and fourth place can be one one-hundredth of a second apart. Less than a blink. Everything an athlete does — every nutrition decision, every recovery session, every breathing protocol — exists to find that one one-hundredth of a second. Once a kid sees that, they understand why the mental work matters, and why a sports psychologist isn’t a luxury or a sign something is wrong. It’s part of the job.
What is one thing you hope young readers take away from So You Want To Be A Professional Athlete?
That athlete is not a job they have to wait to be given. The book ends with this line, and I mean it as plainly as I can: professional is a destination, but athlete is an identity. A kid lacing up shoes on a front porch, about to go outside and find out what their body can do — that kid is already an athlete. Nobody has to certify it.
Most professional athletes will tell you the same thing in their own words: the love of moving, of testing yourself, of getting measurably better at one specific thing through focused work — that’s what carried them. The contract came later. If a reader closes this book and goes outside, that’s the whole thing. The rest of the work, they can begin tomorrow morning.
And the deeper takeaway, whether or not sport ever becomes their chosen profession, is that the way a serious athlete learns to live is the way any serious person learns to live. Showing up before dawn when no one is watching. Doing the boring repetitions because that’s where mastery actually resides. Losing, looking honestly at why, and trying again. Trusting a coach. Trusting a team. Being patient with a body, or a skill, or a goal that is improving on a timeline you cannot rush. Those habits not only build athletes. They build doctors, engineers, teachers, parents, and citizens. A child who learns them through sport carries them into every room they will ever enter. The trophy on the shelf is a small thing. The person formed in the pursuit of it is the whole point.
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This illustrated nonfiction guide takes young readers ages 10 to 14 inside the real world of elite sports — not the highlight reels and trophy ceremonies, but the thousands of hours of training, discipline, and sacrifice that happen long before the arena lights come on. From pre-season conditioning and sports science to in-season competition and recovery, this book shows kids what professional athletes actually do every single day to perform at the absolute edge of human capability.
You will discover how athletes build their bodies through periodized training programs, nutrition science, biomechanics, and carefully planned sleep and recovery. You will learn how they develop the mental toughness and psychological resilience to handle pressure, failure, and the relentless scrutiny that comes with competing at the highest level. And you will see why mindset and discipline matter just as much as speed, strength, or natural ability — because at the professional level, the margin between winning and losing is smaller than most people can imagine.
This is also a book about what a sports career really costs and what it gives back. It covers the full arc of an athletic life — its intensity, its brevity, and how the best athletes build confidence and prepare for what comes after the final game. It explores the team behind every athlete: the coaches, trainers, nutritionists, and sports psychologists who work in careful coordination so that one person, in one moment, can do something extraordinary.
Packed with vivid illustrations and real stories of what elite training looks like from the inside, this guide treats young athletes as equals. It does not talk down. It does not oversimplify. It brings kids all the way into a world most children only see from the stands — and gives them honest, specific answers about whether this demanding path might be their calling.
Whether your young reader dreams of competing in baseball, soccer, basketball, swimming, or any sport that demands everything they have, this book was written for the boy or girl who is never just playing. The one who is always competing, always measuring, always reaching for something just beyond their current best.
Somewhere right now, in a gym or on a field or in a pool, the next great athlete is doing the work that no one sees yet. This book is for the kid who wants to know exactly what that work looks like.
The Sweet Season
The Sweet Season, by James B. Farmer, follows a group of overlooked girls in a struggling Midwestern town who become the Sweets, a softball team built from “leftovers” and shaped by an aging coach with grief, regrets, and a stubborn belief in effort. At the center are Jessee, a gifted but emotionally bruised athlete, and Cat, a Somali refugee whose quiet courage changes not only the team but the town around them. What begins as a sports story gradually becomes a novel about friendship, discipline, community repair, and the long echo of one incandescent life.
I was most drawn to the way Farmer treats softball not as decoration but as a moral language. Practice matters here. Repetition matters. Failure isn’t glamorous, but it’s useful. The games have tension, yet the deeper victories happen in the smaller moments: a girl learning to trust a teammate, an old coach learning he still has something to give, a neglected town beginning to remember its young people. The novel has an old-fashioned largeness of heart, but it’s not soft. It keeps returning to hard subjects, poverty, prejudice, violence, grief, civic neglect, and asks what people owe one another when the scoreboard is not enough.
Cat is the book’s emotional lodestar, and Jessee’s arc gives the story much of its ache. Their friendship feels unlikely at first, then necessary, then almost mythic in its power to reorder lives. I appreciated that the novel lets love show itself through action rather than sentiment alone: tutoring, training, showing up, refusing to quit. At times, the book’s earnestness is big enough to fill a stadium, but I found that part of its charm. It wants readers to believe that character can be coached, that broken towns can be mended, and that a team can become a kind of chosen family.
This book will appeal to readers who enjoy coming-of-age fiction, sports fiction, inspirational fiction, and character-driven literary fiction with strong themes of resilience and community. Fans of A League of Their Own may recognize the fierce joy of women proving themselves on the field, while readers who admire Fredrik Backman’s blend of humor, heartbreak, and communal healing may feel at home in Farmer’s Centerville. The Sweet Season is a warm, bruising, deeply earnest novel about the people who teach us how to win without letting winning become the point.
Pages: 401 | ASIN : B0GWRXSHF4
So You Want To Be A Professional Athlete
So You Want To Be A Professional Athlete, by Linda Soules, is a smart and encouraging nonfiction guide for kids who dream about playing sports at the highest level. Instead of focusing only on fame, trophies, and big game moments, this book shows what being a professional athlete really looks like behind the scenes. Soules makes it clear that talent matters, but it is only the beginning. The real work comes through practice, discipline, training, recovery, and learning how to handle pressure.
One of the best parts of this children’s book is how honest it is without being discouraging. Young readers learn about strength training, nutrition, sleep, film study, mental toughness, and the team of coaches, trainers, nutritionists, and sports psychologists who help athletes perform their best. The book also explains the less glamorous parts of the job, like injuries, early mornings, strict routines, public failure, and the fact that an athletic career does not last forever. That honesty makes the book feel useful, especially for kids who may think professional athletes mostly just show up and play.
The writing is clear, casual, and easy for kids to follow, while still treating them like serious readers. Soules doesn’t talk down to her audience, and she gives enough detail to make the world of elite sports feel real. The colorful illustrations, fun facts, real athlete stories, glossary, and “day in the life” sections help keep the book engaging. Some parts are packed with information, so it may appeal most to curious readers who enjoy learning how things work, but sports-loving kids will find plenty here to keep their attention. I also liked how it mentions that “The mental dimension is as demanding as the physical.” I don’t think many children’s book go into this aspect enough, and I was happy to see this book tackle that side of sports.
So You Want To Be A Professional Athlete is a great choice for young athletes, sports fans, families, teachers, and coaches. It gives kids a realistic look at the hard work behind greatness while still encouraging them to dream big. More than anything, it shows that being “professional” starts long before the crowd cheers your name, it starts with the choices you make when no one is watching.
Pages: 38 | ISBN : 978-1972766200
Practice Makes Perfect
Practice Makes Perfect: Draw Facial Expression is a fresh and creative take on the traditional colouring book. Instead of only giving readers finished outlines to color, this book introduces a new concept: drawing faces and facial expressions within a larger scene. That makes it feel more interactive, imaginative, and skill-building than the usual colouring activity.
The sports theme gives the book energy and movement. The pages show athletes in various sports and in a variety of situations. This kind of subject matter makes the colouring experience more exciting because the reader is not just filling in shapes; they are thinking about the character, the setting, and the emotion of the moment.
What makes this colouring book different from the norm is its focus on expression. This one encourages the reader to add personality by drawing faces. That small creative challenge can help build observation skills and storytelling ability. A happy, nervous, focused, or surprised expression can completely change the mood of the picture.
This is a thoughtful and original colouring book for young artists, sports fans, and anyone who enjoys drawing characters with emotion. It combines colouring, drawing practice, facial expression study, and sports storytelling in one book. It’s different, engaging, and a great choice for children who want something more creative than an ordinary colouring book.
Hard Times: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Nathan ‘The King Cobra’ Washington
Hard Times: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Nathan “The King Cobra” Washington, by M. Anthony Phillips, opens as a search story and widens into something far larger: a young magazine writer tracks down a vanished heavyweight champion, only to uncover a life marked by sharecropping poverty in Georgia, racist terror, war service, boxing glory, mob pressure, flight, reinvention, and old grief that never quite cooled. What begins as a sports mystery becomes a multigenerational saga about what a man loses when history corners him and what, against reason, he still manages to keep.
I appreciated the way Phillips portrayed Nathan’s emotional depth, instead of just listing things that happened to him. The early scenes of his family, the long shadow of Jim Crow, and the bruising detours of his adulthood give the novel a rough-hewn earnestness that suits its subject. I felt the book reaching not for polish so much as amplitude. It wants to tell the whole thing: ambition, lust, fear, tenderness, humiliation, pride. Nathan isn’t presented as an emblem or a sermon. He’s a battered, desirous, stubborn human being, and the book is strongest when it trusts that plain, unsanitized fact.
The prose can swing from vivid to blunt. Yet even when it can be melodramatic, I rarely felt indifferent. There’s a kind of unvarnished conviction here that kept me reading. I was especially struck by the book’s sense of aftermath: Nathan doesn’t simply vanish into legend; he survives into obscurity, sorrow, compromised second chances, and a late-life reckoning that is more melancholy than triumphant. That choice gave the novel a mournful aftertaste I found compelling. It refuses the easy coronation. It is more interested in the cost of surviving than in the glamour of winning.
I would recommend Hard Times to readers of sports fiction, historical fiction, and Black historical drama who want a big, old-fashioned story told with bruised sincerity rather than minimalist cool. Readers who respond to sagas of struggle, war, race, boxing, family, and redemption will likely find a great deal to hold onto here. In spirit, it sometimes feels closer to the broad emotional sweep of Walter Dean Myers or the combative American mythmaking around boxing narratives than to sleek contemporary literary fiction. Hard Times is not a delicate novel, but it is a heartfelt one, and its best blows land with the weight of a life fully lived.
Pages: 384 | ASIN : B00AA3PGRE
Strategy, Focus, and Concentration
Readora From BookTropolis is an engaging alphabet book for young readers that presents each sports-related letter through haiku-style verses framed by the tale of Readora, a reading superhero. What drew you to using haiku-style verses for each sport?
I have been writing poetry since childhood. Haiku is a style of written communication that allows a person to say a lot with few words. Kids have short attention spans, so telling a story or teaching lesson plans in short rhythmic form is an easier and more fun approach to reaching them rather than straight conversation. Plus, an impactful or sensible haiku statement (poetry/rap) is easy to remember. Also, my voice is Readora’s voice in the readings.
Do you have a personal favorite sport featured in the book?
My favorite sport in the book is chess because it requires critical thinking, strategy, focus, and concentration. These are life-long skills that children can learn as youngsters and apply to everything they do in the future.
The artwork in your book is wonderful. Can you share a little about your collaboration with illustrators Heyjuly and Kesab Karmakar?
I found both illustrators on a design platform and posted an RFP of my requirements. More than 20 artists sent designs. The first request was for the Readora from BookTropolis character. Among other specifications, I provided a younger photo of myself so the character can be created in my image. Intellectual property rights are critical, so I wanted to ensure that my face is the only one the designers would reference. All other designs were created based on the content of each sport in the book, with the use of AI prompts, with Kesab Karmakar contributing several sports illustrations as well.
How do you hope parents, teachers, or librarians will use this book with children?
This book is the first in a series of books called the Readora from BookTropolis Learning Series. The intent is for parents, teachers, and librarians to use this book and all others to come as a method of teaching younger readers their alphabet, introducing them to various sports, both traditional and those not as well known, and through the haiku style of writing, teaching children to read and comprehend while viewing the vibrant illustrations.
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The Tao of Hitting
The Tao of Hitting blends a short course in Taoist thought with a very practical guide to hitting a baseball. Author Christian Petersen walks through core ideas like yin and yang, the Uncarved Block, the Three Treasures, and wu wei, then shows how they connect to the batter’s box, from approach and timing to pitch selection and mental routine. Along the way he tells stories about players from Babe Ruth to Jeff Bagwell, shares results from his college coaching days, and finishes with concrete drills that put the philosophy into daily work.
I enjoyed how open and unpretentious the voice feels. Petersen sounds like a smart, slightly stubborn coach who has been around a lot of dugouts and classrooms, and that mix works for a book like this. The anecdotes about Bagwell, Todd Reynolds, Forrest Gump, and Winnie the Pooh give the text a human pulse and break up the teaching in a nice way. The prose circles back to the same points about simplicity and relaxation. Still, I rarely felt talked down to. The tone stays warm, curious, and humble, which kept me reading and made the more technical bits easier to swallow.
The emphasis on walks as “not doing,” the stress on a quiet mind, and the push against one size fits all mechanics all rang true. I liked how he frames the hitter as an “uncarved block” and urges coaches to help players uncover, not overwrite, their natural swing. The chapter on analytics is also thoughtful, not a rant. He admits numbers matter, then argues that they should serve the player’s instinct instead of replacing it. The drills at the end and the repeated focus on approach in real counts make the book useful, not just inspirational.
I came away liking this book a lot and feeling oddly calmer about the chaos of hitting. I would recommend The Tao of Hitting to serious high school and college hitters, to coaches who are tired of chasing the latest mechanical fad, and to parents who want to support their kids without turning every session into a lab experiment. Lifelong baseball fans who enjoy the mental side of the game will also find plenty to chew on. If you are open to mixing a little Eastern philosophy with cage work and game stories, this book is a good fit.
Pages: 199 | ASIN : B0GDMYD3QN
Life-Changing Injury
The Legend of Harry Gardner follows a Harvard student journalist, his connection with a football star, and the consequences of a life-changing injury. Where did the idea for this novel come from?
Although I’ve spent most of my writing life in the world of history and biography, I’ve always dreamed of writing a novel, especially one about college football in the 1920’s. The Legend of Harry Gardner is the result of that dream. The inspiration for the major character in the book is the celebrated sports figure, Hobey Baker, who is still considered one of the greatest American college athletes of all time – a star in football and hockey at Princeton. But it wasn’t just his sports heroics on the field that intrigued me, but his sense of character, humility, and sportsmanship, a trait I tried to instill in Harry. The “life-changing injury” incident came from a real Harvard football game in 1909, when Harvard Captain Hamilton Fish hit an opposing player so hard (not maliciously) that the player died the next day. Fish missed several games as a result, but then rejoined the team. As to “Peabo” Elliott, I guess I loosely based him on George Plimpton, the famous “participatory journalist” of modern times, who was from a well-to-do family, dabbled in sports, and was a keen observer of sports heroes.
Is there anything pulled from your own experiences included in Peabo or Harry’s storylines?
Playing high school football helped me get a sense of the sights and sounds and chaos of an actual game from ground level. Attending graduate school at Harvard (and attending several Harvard-Yale games) gave me a sense of place and the color and excitement of a college football game and the look and feel of the stadium.
What research did you do for this novel to get it right?
I read newspaper accounts – both in the Harvard Crimson and New York Times – of old college football games; read several books about Hobey Baker; re-read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise (a fictional character named Allenby is based on Hobey Baker); and read everything George Plimpton ever wrote.
Can we look forward to more work from you soon? What are you currently working on?
Yes, I am currently at work on a non-fiction book titled, Harvard Boys, about the intersecting lives of several extraordinary characters as they navigate – both personally and professionally – many of the most important events of the twentieth century: Revolutionary John Reed; columnist Walter Lippmann; World War I poet Alan Seeger; “Putzi” Hanfstaengl, Adolph Hitler’s favorite piano player; and artist Waldo Peirce. I’m also at work on a humorous collection of fictional short stories called Cat Bubbles, Roadsters, and Other Peculiar College Tales, about the adventures and misadventures of a colorful cast of college sports jocks, social gadflies, scoundrels, eccentrics, and one or two kind-hearted souls.
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