I guess most of my friends and I were the opposite of Max. I enjoyed learning about competitive cheering. This book seems to be written for middle grade level I am well past middle grade age. Burkey for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. I am looking forward to reading the next book in the series.

It is the first book of a series that will follow Max as she works her way through the ranks. All of these concepts and more make this a very good book for readers in grades 4-8.

She looks to adults, including the coaches and her father, for guidance. She feels out of place and feels the entire gamut of emotions while at the gym from isolation to elation. She hates all the glitter, tight shorts and makeup, yet she knows she is good at the dances, tumbling and flips. What also makes the story a good one for readers about the same age as Max is that she is constantly feeling conflicted. The descriptions of the moves and the sport of cheerleading is excellent as a reader of any age will learn more about the sport and what types of practice and training these young people do in order to perform such a show for the judges and the spectators. The acronym is for the first initial of the three adults who coach the girls. The dialogue is realistic for the girls who are practicing in the TNT Force gym. The story is geared toward “tweens” about the same age as Max with age-appropriate material and language. Max usually hangs out with and plays with boys, but when she decides to try some tumbling on a trampoline at a park, it leads her to entirely different world full of glitter, tights, dance and other “girly” things that she doesn’t like. The latter of the two is the setting for this story of a 12 year old tomboy girl who discovers she has a talent for this type of sport and also more about herself. The other image that may come to mind is a team performing well-orchestrated dances, tumbles, human pyramids and other similar stunts before judges in a competitive setting.

It will either be the young girls in skirts with huge pom-poms in their hands standing and jumping on the sidelines to cheer the school’s football team to victory. When one hears the world “cheerleading”, one of two images will come to mind.

Learning to Fly by Dana Burkey