Nadia: The Girl Who Couldn’t Sit Still by Karlin Gray (review)

The Olympics are coming, which means it’s time for new media darlings. Gray’s picture-book biography takes us back to a star of yesteryear, the inimitable Nadia Comaneci, starting with her early childhood love of climbing trees. Her parents signed her up for gymnastics to channel that energy, and after a few setbacks she became the top gymnast in the world. The main focus, of course, is the legendary Olympics where fourteen-year-old Nadia scored a stream of unprecedented perfect 10s (leading to dramatic confusion with a scoreboard that hadn’t been programmed to display such a result). The text is formulaic, never going beyond the expected template, but it’s sprightly and well researched. The loose linework in Davenier’s illustrations is as limber as Nadia herself, and the liquid dabs of translucent complementary teals and reds add to the sense of movement. This is a serviceable outing that will best entertain youngsters who already have the gymnastics bug, and while they might already know about the great Nadia, they may enjoy reliving her story. Thorough end matter includes an afterword briefly covers Nadia’s subsequent life; a timeline; and detailed source notes. Photographs of Nadia, only one of them in action, are sadly relegated to the jacket flap.