Kid Olympians: Winter: True Tales of Childhood from Champions and Game Changers

by Robin Stevenson, Allison Steinfeld (illustrator)

Triumphant, relatable, and totally true biographies tell the childhood stories of a diverse group of international athletes who have captured the world’s attention at the Winter Olympics and Paralympics, including Johnny Weir, Chloe Kim, Alex and Maia Shibutani, Surya Bonaly, and twelve other inspiring Olympians.

All over the world, athletes break records and defy odds to compete in the games—and some were kids themselves when they started dreaming and training! In Kid Winter, discover the childhood stories of legends such
Michelle Kwan, who used to sleep in her skating clothes to get a few extra minutes of sleep before her lessons at dawn!Cindy Ouellet, one of the few athletes to have competed in both the Winter and Summer Paralympics.Apolo Ohno, who started skating because he thought the speed skaters looked like superheroes!
With kid-friendly text and full-color illustrations, the book will inspire you to dream bigger, faster, and higher than ever before!

The diverse and inspiring group also includes Callan Chythlook-Sifsof, Adam Rippon, Kristy Yamaguchi, Lindsey Vonn, Marie-Philip Poulin, Shani Davis, Charles Flaherty, Maame Biney, and Nathan Chen.

Genres: Nonfiction, Childrens

240 pages, Hardcover

Published November 11, 2025

About the author

Robin Stevenson is the award winning author of over thirty books of fiction and non-fiction for kids and teens. Her books have received starred reviews and have won the Silver Birch Award, the Sheila A. Egoff award and a Stonewall Honor, and been finalists for the Governor General’s Literary Awards, the Lambda Literary Awards, and many reader’s choice awards. Robin was the Book and Periodical Council of Canada’s Champion of Free Expression for 2022, and received the Lieutenant Governor's Award for Literary Excellence in 2023. She lives on the west coast of Canada.

Reviews

[Stacie]

Who’s excited for the Winter Olympics? In just a week, I, along with millions of other people, will be watching the Winter Olympics. I’ve always felt that watching the Olympics was special because they were only held every 2 years (alternating between summer and winter) and were on TV for a short period of time. This year, you can watch the Winter Olympics held in Italy from February 6-22, 2026. Some of my favorite events are figure skating, bobsledding, hockey, and ski jumping.

Get your kids excited about the Olympics by reading short biographies about international athletes. Olympians like Kristi Yamaguchi, Lindsey Vonn, Adam Rippon, Apolo Ohno, and Chloe Kim will share stories from their childhoods and what sacrifices they made to become inspiring athletes. As I read through the stories, I was surprised by how many of the athletes suffered from bullying as children, either because of their ethnicity or just by being absent from school so often that they had a lack of friends. If anything, that hardship only made them work harder towards their goals.

Kristi Yamaguchi, now a mom in her 40s, shares about growing up as a Japanese American and being born with clubfoot. Who would imagine a child with a club foot would grow up to be an Olympic figure skater someday? Kristi idolized Dorothy Hamill and took her Dorothy doll to the skating rink, where she fell in love with skating. First, she tried pairs skating and eventually became more comfortable as a solo skater. She missed out on school events like dances and football games because of her grueling practice schedule, eventually choosing to homeschool. But the sacrifices were worth it. Kristi was the first American woman to win Olympic gold since Dorothy Hamill in 1976, winning it in the 1992 Winter Olympics in France.

Stories like Kristi’s and others will offer kids insight into the kinds of sacrifices that were made by the Olympians, their dedication to practice, their failures, and their successes. The road to the Olympics isn’t an easy one, and kids will learn the value of hard work and persistence while reading these stories. Even though many of the athletes in this book have retired from competing, moved into the coaching realm, or are pursuing other careers, there are still some athletes in the book that kids can watch and cheer for this year. Those competing in the 2026 Olympics in Italy are Lindsey Vonn, Marie-Philip Poulin, Chloe Kim, and Alex and Maia Shibutani.

[Ms. Yingling]

Copy provided by the publisher

Just in time for the Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo 2026 Winter games, this collective biography shines the spotlight on 16 athletes who represent different sports and different cultural backgrounds. Divided into four categories (Olympic Pride, Powerful Women, Olympic Firsts, and Taking the Ice), we get a rare look into the childhood of these sports enthusiasts. We learn about their living situations with parents, their experiences in school, and their introduction to their sport of choice. While it's possible to look up news articles about the Olympic exploits of all of the subjects, it's nice to have an overview of what the historical times were like when they were active, and the challenges that they faced in competition. For some of the older athletes, we also get a look at what they have done since they have retired from the sport.

It's interesting that there are two sets of siblings included; ice skaters Alex and Maia Shibutani (who have also written the Kudo Kids middle grade series!) and skiers Charles and William Flaherty. Supportive family is so important to the training process that it's good to see so many parents discussed as well. While younger readers will appreciate that most of the athletes are from the 2000s, with Michelle Kwan being about the oldest inclusion, I would have liked to see some older Olympians like track and field star Bob Mathias or swimmer Arati Saha.

Steinfeld's colorful illustrations give a good feel for not only Olympic moments but childhood ones as well. Their cartoon style will appeal to readers of graphic novels. As a huge fan of Simon Kids classic Childhood of Famous Americans series (which I mention every time I read one of these!) I love seeing the new categories that Stevenson and Steinfeld find to highlight in this Kid Legends series. There are eleven titles in all, starting with Kid Presidents (2014) and continuing through Kid Innovators (2021) and Kid Musicians: True Tales of Childhood from Entertainer, Songwriters, and Stars (2024). I don't know how I managed to miss Kid Authors!

[Theediscerning]

Come here for sixteen stories of aspirational Winter Olympians – and yes, this is slightly out of date already, what with the 2026 games being performed as I write, but these stories remain. They don't always focus on the best ever athletes – Callan Chythlook-Sifsof won entry to one games, and didn't exactly over-perform, but deserves her place for being the first Native Alaskan to compete, as well as for the sexuality that includes her in the first bracket of four subjects here. A section of 'firsts' includes Puerto Rican skiers.

Readers of books like the Rebel Girls series will perhaps be surprised at the length of these chapters – it's not just a page you get, for there's considerably more said here about fewer personalities. And they're dramatised very well – the constants are the long hours and the lack of life for the parents, stars and siblings alike as training takes precedence throughout the schoolday years – but however similar the stories get the writing here is engaging and different enough.

The point of order then must be the fact the great bulk of these are American subjects. PR is not the 51st State yet, I know, but the stars there – and in the chapter featuring a French skater – trained in America, if nothing else. This therefore manages to be inspiring and to point at so many unlikely success stories, but also those connected to North America only (there being a female ice hockey legend from north of the border here).

Yes, to me the reader is served well here – but certainly deserves the global look the Olympics are designed for. With copious cartoonish illustrations and an ease of reading this will be a sports book of no small popularity, but clearly of much more use if it had looked away from the Americas. Three and a half stars, when it deserved a lot more.

[Lori]

KID OLYMPIANS: WINTER includes fact-filled profiles of a variety of athletes who made their mark competing in the Winter Olympics. The profiles include information about the intense training regimes required to be at the peak of a sport and the sacrifices that many of the athletes had to make to achieve success. Challenges faced by athletes, including injuries, mental health, racism, and financial hardships, are also detailed in the profiles, but these do not detract from the ultimate presentation of the athletes and their successes as inspirational and impressive. Instead, these challenges show how perseverance and commitment are required along with skill to excel at the highest level of the sport. The role of athletes' families in their successes is also highlighted, showing how they played a role in each athlete's success, often making significant sacrifices to further the athlete's career. Color illustrations break up the text, which is written in a upper elementary reader-friendly format and tone. With the 2026 Winter Olympics coming soon, I can see this book being a high interest title for many readers as they look for information on the competition.

[Pam]

I received an electronic ARC from Quirk Books through NetGalley.
Stevenson shares brief portions of various Winter Olympians stories from childhood through Olympic competitions. They offer a look at the intense training schedules and all that these athletes and their families sacrificed so they could compete in sports they loved.
Each chapter is devoted to a different athlete's journey. Readers will connect with portions of each backstory. I appreciate that Stevenson wrote at a level upper elementary readers will understand. This is certainly not a tell all that digs into issues but neither does it gloss over the challenges each athlete faced based on who they are.

[Goddess of Chaos]

“For many of the athletes in this book, watching the Olympics is exactly how their journey to the Winter Games began.”

Watching the Winter Olympics is inspiring… whether you are athletic or not.

As the 2026 Olympics started I decided to pick this book up, and really appreciate the way it balances the challenges of training and competing with the dream of winning an Olympic medal, or even just competing at the Olympics.

I particularly appreciate that the book highlights the fact not everyone starts a sport as soon as they can walk. Some were ten or eleven years old when they discovered their passion.

[Gina]

Great collection of the childhood of various Winter Olympians. Each biography was the perfect length to understand their journey to the Olympics. I highly recommend this book. Good for any kids who like sports and very inspirational. I am familiar with few Winter Olympians and I learned a lot even though this book was aimed at kids. I like there was a list of books in the back if you wanted to learn more about the athletes in the book. Picked up this book at the library after watching the 2026 Olympics.

[Lena Reich]

Loved this! Highly recommend for kids and adults. Read it for Chloe Kim and Kristi Yamaguchi, but it ended up being a great introduction/closer look to other athletes in winter sports as well, and I have been inspired to learn more about them and follow their journeys. Perfect for someone entry-level like me who is interested and knows a little about winter sports, it provided a great overview of a diverse set of athletes (mostly US-based) and their inspiring stories. Would love to read more on the series, super well done!

[Petraq]

Just like the Summer edition, this one tells a microbiography of Olympic athletes, their aspirations as kids, the struggles to get where they are now, and trying to inspire children to do the same thing as them. Pretty lovely.

[Hannah]

a simple, quick read. winter olympics <333

[Rachael Salmon]

As quite a fan of the Winter Olympics, I welcomed the chance to review this book on #NetGalley
I thought the book gave a really thorough account - in an entertaining way - about the commitment it takes to compete in the Winter Olympics (I guess this is the same as the Summer ones, but I haven't read that book!).
From (really really) early morning starts to parental commitments (moving across the country) to baking banana bread to cope with stress, the stories in here are diverse and inspiring.
The author looks at not only the physical challenges the kid Olympians went through, but also mental health, homophobia, racism, classism, family breakup, adolescent angst and various other difficulties.
Whilst the book is not a warts-and-all look at the path to the Olympics, neither does it sugar coat the realities of training for something over a long period of time. What I liked about it too was that it wasn't all about the medals (not every Olympian has won gold for instance) but it was about the sense of achievement of getting to the Olympics and the joy that can be found in the journey.