So You Want To Be A Professional Athlete
by Linda Soules
BEST TREATMENT OF GRIEF BOOKY
The judge's reasoning
So You Want To Be A Professional Athlete earns its Booky on Theme & Substance because it does something genuinely rare in middle-grade nonfiction: it trusts its young reader with the real thing. This is not a book about what professional athletes have — it's a book about what they do and, more importantly, who they become. The organizing thesis — "Talent gets you to the starting line. Discipline gets you to the finish" — is stated early and then proved on every subsequent page, not just asserted.
Soules earns particular credit for the way she handles the Derek Redmond story. Rather than using it as simple inspiration porn, she closes it with precision: "The medals would have tested his legs. The walk tested his character. And character is the thing that lasts after the legs are done." That's not filler. That's a ten-year-old's first lesson in the difference between achievement and integrity.
The book also handles complexity with unusual honesty for its age range — the disorientation of retirement, the reality that most NFL careers end before age 27, the counterintuitive truth that Simone Biles withdrawing at Tokyo was the most professional choice. The glossary entries do real work too; the definition of Resilience doesn't stop at "bouncing back" — it ends with "getting up becomes automatic," which is a genuinely harder and more useful idea.
On Emotional Resonance, the author's note lands with quiet authority: the yes that lasts "is the one you give to the practice nobody films." That's the book's emotional payoff, and it earns it.
Judged by Brooke Hayes — Reader-at-Large · Cross-Genre · Emerging Voices
"Every book is the only book for somebody."
Supporting passages
"The medals would have tested his legs. The walk tested his character. And character is the thing that lasts after the legs are done."
This closing beat on the Derek Redmond story transforms an inspirational anecdote into a precise, durable idea — exactly the kind of substantive takeaway that gives a middle-grade nonfiction book its staying power.
"The yes that lasts isn't the one you give to the highlight reel — it's the one you give to the practice nobody films, the morning after a loss, the body that needs work today because you worked it yesterday."
This passage from the author's note reframes the book's central question in emotional rather than informational terms, giving young readers something to carry with them long after the facts have faded.
"Professional doesn't mean famous. Professional means your body is your instrument, and your job is to make it do things most human bodies can't."
Short, declarative, and genuinely clarifying — this sentence does the work of three paragraphs in a lesser book and sets the tonal register the rest of the text earns the right to sustain.
Per-axis rubric scores
Every Booky-winning book is scored across all ten craft axes. The award is given on the top axis (or top two for premium tiers).
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