(++++) EXTRA ORDINARY

I Am Simone Biles. By Brad Meltzer. Illustrated by Christopher Eliopoulos. Rocky Pond Books. $16.99. 

     Sweet and cute and well-intentioned as can be, Brad Meltzer’s “Ordinary People Change the World” series is one of those phenomena that only the churlish would dare to critique. The books, which have inspired a PBS Kids show, continue to churn out example after example of people to whom very young readers can look up, knowing that they too can do exceptional things and in so doing can make their own mark on society. 

     But…just a moment. If the books are about “ordinary” people and are entirely devoted to showing how each person on whom Meltzer focuses is extraordinary, then what exactly is being taught here? And if the books are about top-level success in one specific, narrow field, then in what way do they show that the people on whom Meltzer focuses “change the world”? 

     So, all right, looking too closely at these little books does seem churlish to the point of being curmudgeonly, but it will help parents and other adults – who will want to use the books to encourage kids in various ways – to know what these stories really do and what is beyond them. I Am Simone Biles, the latest series entry, is about the Olympic gold-medal winner considered to be the best gymnast of all time. Christopher Eliopoulos makes her adorable, and about six years old, in his cartoon drawings – and one oddity of the book is that six-year-old Biles stays the same in the illustrations even when the text says she is 16, 17, 18, 19, and even in her 20s. This is decidedly peculiar, more than the usual “willing suspension of disbelief” expected from simple, hagiographic biographies targeting very young readers. Even when Biles – who “narrates” the book, which really does include many of her own words – talks about being 27 years old “at the 2024 Olympics in Paris,” the illustration still shows her as a cartoon girl of about six. 

     There are plenty of adults and plenty of people who age in the book, so clearly the decision to keep cartoon Biles at the target age range for readers of the book is a deliberate one. It may help young readers relate to this exceptional athlete, but it also produces a decidedly strange environment – just how strange is clear at the end of the book, where several photos of real-world Biles are offered. 

     Supposing that young readers are sufficiently charmed by the illustrations (which are charming) to read through the whole story, what lesson is Meltzer trying to teach? This goes back to the “Ordinary People Change the World” overview of this series. Simone Biles is scarcely an ordinary person – she is extraordinarily talented, worked tremendously hard for her successes, and has abilities that are far, far beyond anything that 99%+ of readers will ever have. So the “ordinary people” concept does not apply. Furthermore, Biles may have made some changes in her chosen field – the book points out that new gymnastic moves have been named after her, since she was the first to do them – but while this represents a bit of a change in the world of gymnastics, it in no way is a “change the world” situation in the sense of the series title. 

     Interestingly, the most important life lesson to be gleaned from the Simone Biles story – and one that really can be useful to young readers, even though none of them is ever likely to approach Biles’ level in Biles’ chosen field – has to do with Biles’ decision to withdraw from the 2020 Olympics because of mental-health issues. This is certainly included in the book, as are the widespread and often nasty remarks made by people because of it; and Biles’ slow recovery from that dark time does get one page of treatment here: “For strength, I relied on my family, my teammates, my three dogs. And of course, my therapist.” It looks weird to see cartoon six-year-old Biles with her dogs and sports psychologist Robert Andrews – one of several real-world people who make appearances in the book – since Biles was 25 at the time of this particular scene. But for adults looking to extract usable rather than pie-in-the-sky value from I Am Simone Biles, the notion of a mental-health crisis, the seeking of external help to get through it, the willingness to address one’s own needs before trying to please anybody else, the slow re-emergence from despair to an ability to handle the world, are all life lessons that Biles’ story communicates effectively even when they are inevitably downplayed (given the target age range for this book) in order to keep matters as upbeat and triumphal as possible. 

     So I Am Simone Biles is not really about an ordinary person changing the world – it is about an extraordinary athlete rebounding from a severe mental and emotional reversal to attain new heights of accomplishment. It is told in age-appropriate fashion and illustrated in very relatable ways as long as nobody pays too much attention to the clash between Biles’ real age in various scenes and the age of her cartoon protagonist. Young readers will surely gravitate to the book for its high points, but adults will find a much more important teachable moment when Biles hits a serious low and needs to figure out how to resume her remarkable (if scarcely world-changing) athletic career.