| It's
Not About the Bike is a story of an extreme athlete – bicycle racer Lance
Armstrong, who conquered cancer and came back to win the Tour de France.
The Tour de France is over 2,000 miles long and takes more than twenty
days to complete. But Lance’s story starts in Plano Texas, where, as a
boy, he and his mom worked to fight opinions that they couldn’t make anything
of themselves. There he begins his love of bike racing and soon is earning
money by entering and winning races.
The book moves through Lance’s
discovery that he has advanced cancer (he was thinking his discomforts
were the normal aches and pains of being a racer), his immediate immersion
into intense chemotherapy and surgeries, and his recovery. He writes very
vividly about the illness, treatments, side effects, and his emotions during
all of it.
The final part of the book
is about his the roller coaster of recovery and how he not only comes back
to riding then racing bikes, but ultimately his triumphs. Lance Armstrong
is a hero in bicycle racing as well as overcoming illness and in his personal
relationships.
(Jan Knauer, Colorado
Blue Spruce YA Book Award, 2003) |
