Winning Balance
Back in 2008, when I watched the Olympics for gymnastics I was astonished with Shawn Johnson winning the gold all around. Later on, after she had won gold in the Olympics she had wrote an autobiography. I was ten at the time when she had wrote her book and I wanted to wait a few years to read it since I had a feeling I wouldn’t understand it. Shawn Johnson was only twenty years old when she wrote her book. Shawn wrote her book at a very young age and I think that had an impact on who her audience was and still is today.
In Winning Balance, Shawn talks about what she has learned about love,faith, and living your dreams. She talks about her gymnastics career and how much it had an impact on her life and how it got her to where she is now. One of the things that she wanted her audience to get from reading her book was that “behind all the glitz and glamour she was able to have a normal life with it all” Shawn said. I think her target audience was girls in middle school and highschool because they would get really inspired by reading her book and believe that dreams actually do come true. Gymnasts around the world would take a lot from this book because in some situations they all  experience the same things in gymnastics. 
   It all started when Shawn was three years old because that is when she started gymnastics in Des Moines,Iowa. She went to Chow's gymnastics where her coach Liang letter witnessed something special in Shawn and sent a video to the National Team Coordinator of USA Gymnastics and that’s where her career began. No more than a couple of years later, at the age of sixteen she was known as no more than a three time silver medalist and gold medalist. Throughout the book Shawn shares the struggles that she has overcome throughout her gymnastics career;especially her knee injury that she went through. Her knee injury had a very significant role in her life because it’s the reason for her retirement.She also talks about her career of Dancing with the Stars that launched off in the 2009.At the end of each chapter she shares a lesson that she has learned for that experience;for the age that she wrote her book she wrote many words of wisdom.
Reading this book was very inspirational for me as gymnast since gymnastics also plays a huge role in my life and has been for the past twelve years. One of my favorite quotes from this book is “As long as you’ve done your best, making mistakes doesn’t matter. You and I are human;we will mess up. What counts is learning from your mistakes and getting back up when life has knocked you down”. She inspires me to never quit gymnastics and to always have faith in myself as a gymnast no matter how hard it gets. I’ve learned that hard work and dedication pays all off in the future showing all of your success and victories. Shawn has encouraged me to take my dreams further than I would have ever imagined,which is to make it into the Olympics someday. Shawn Johnson inspires many gymnast to believe in themselves even through the hardest times and shows that one day all of the hardwork will pay off and I think that’s why she is very well known in the gymnastics world.
Beyond doubt, I legitimately enjoyed the book. You know the book is just full of excitement and disappointments of her own life and throughout her journey she let’s her audience know that hard work is the key to success. I would recommend this book to young audiences and older ones basically anyone because it’s not just based on gymnastics it’s a life experience and the lessons that she has learned throughout them. This book is very well written and Shawn does an unquestionably genuine job at describing her lessons that she has learned without making them just about gymnastics but about life in general. I thoroughly enjoyed her book once again and would recommend it to really anyone.