Chalked Up by Jennifer Sey

Sey gives us a honest look into the challenging, competitive life of women's elite gymnastics and I think it just touches the surface. This first hand account is riveting and honest. Sey talks about the verbal and emotional abuse that coaches put upon these talented young men and women and about their quest so stay "thin" even if it means eating little to nothing and abusing laxatives. Jennifer's memoir is extraordinary and takes you on a journey and quest to find peace with oneself despite feeling like a failure regardless of successes. Chalked up is well written and will change the way you look at elite gymnastics in the future. 

Grade: A

<>>Synopsis (B&N) The true story of the 1986 U.S. National Gymnastics champion whose lifelong dream was to compete in the Olympics, until anorexia, injuries, and coaching abuses nearly destroyed her Fanciful dreams of gold medals and Nadia Comaneci led Jennifer Sey to become a gymnast at the age of six. She was a natural at the sport, and her early success propelled her family to sacrifice everything to help her become, by age eleven, one of America’s elite, competing at prestigious events worldwide alongside such future gymnastics’ luminaries as Mary Lou Retton. But as she set her sights higher and higher—the senior national team, the World Championships, the 1988 Olympics—Sey began to change, putting her needs, her health, and her well-being aside in the name of winning. And the adults in her life refused to notice her downward spiral. In Chalked Up Sey reveals the tarnish behind her gold medals. A powerful portrait of intensity and drive, eating disorders and stage parents, abusive coaches and manipulative businessmen, denial and the seduction of success, it is the story of a young girl whose dreams would become eclipsed by the adults around her. As she recounts her experiences, Sey sheds light on the destructiveness of our winning-is-everything culture where underage and underweight girls are celebrated and on the need for balance in children’s lives.