This is a series of books written by Alicia Thompson, author of the “The Secret Language of Birthdays: Teen Edition” and loosely based on the gymnastics life and experiences of Dominique Moceanu, who is listed as a co-author.
Alicia Thompson and Olympic gold medalist, Dominique Moceanu, created The Go-for-Gold Gymnasts series of gymnastics books about the world of Elite gymnastics and the lives of the girls who compete there. Each book follows one of the Elite teammates on the fictional Texas Twisters Elite gymnastics team as they try to balance friendships, gymnastics and life.
Go-for-Gold Gymnasts: Winning Team
12-year-old Brittany Morgan moves from Ohio to a world-class gymnastics gym in Texas. Brittany was the best gymnast in her gym in Ohio, but the competition in the Texas gym is much tougher. Fitting in to a new situation can be tough, especially when Brittany has a bad habit of saying the wrong things. Brittany’s new teammates, the extremely graceful Christina, Noelle the perfectionist and Jessie, who is quiet but talented, aren’t eager to make room for any new friends. Brittany has to figure out how to fit in and win with the Texas Twisters Elite gymnastics team. (5-Star Amazon Rating)
Go-for-Gold Gymnasts: Balancing Act
12-year-old gymnast, Noelle Onesti, has a successful gymnastics family history, since her mother was an Elite gymnast in Romania in her youth. Noelle has hereditary talent, natural ability and drive, but at the Elite level of gymnastics, there are always problems to overcome. Noelle worries that her family cannot afford to finance her Elite gymnastics career, and starts to lose herself in her social life and gets a crush, when a boy at school asks her to a dance. Meanwhile, the Junior Nationals in Philadelphia are rapidly approaching and distractions can get in the way of Noelle fulfilling her responsibilities to her team and teammates, Brittany, Christina and Jessie. (4-Star Amazon Rating)
Go-for-Gold Gymnasts: Reaching High
Red-heads like Jessie are not usually known for being the quietest girl, but on the Texas Twisters gymnastics team, that is Jessie’s reputation. She is a dominant performer on the all-important Elite event of vault and she is ready to be noticed in the rest of her life. Jessie decides to no longer be quiet or hide in the background, signing up to join her school cheerleading squad in her freshman year. Jessie’s gymnastic skills make her an instant cheerleading star and she becomes close friends with the cheer captain. But trying to juggle school, cheerleading and Elite gymnastics takes so much time, Jessie finds herself rarely seeing her gymnastics teammates outside of practice and she faces having to choose between gymnastics and being a popular, well-known cheerleader.
Go-for-Gold Gymnasts: Unexpected Twist
Christina has worked her entire life to be a winning Elite gymnast. With the Jr. Elite American Invitational competition coming up, Christina sustains an ankle injury while training vault. When high level gymnasts are forced to take a break from gymnastics, thay are also forced to take a look at their lives. Plus it is hard to feel like a real part of the team, when everyone else is training full out and you are not able to do the same. Questioning her gymnastics, her friends on the team, her whole life and what this injury will mean for it, leaves Christina feeling alone and misunderstood and the only person who seems to even remotely understand what she is going through is Mihai, her teammate Noelle’s older brother. But boys are always a distraction to any girl who really wants to make it in Elite gymnastics and Christina struggles with what she wants to do and what she has to do.
