Customer Reviews

Shannon Miller: My Child, My Hero

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Overall, I think this book is a better book than the one authored by Shannon herself. Yes, it is a bit overdone in spots, but any mother who loves her child is going to overdo things a bit. I also think it's easy to discount the overdramatized and over done things while still enjoying a good read. Shannon's relationships and not so perfect side of life as a world class gymnast are also better discribed here than in Shannon's book, the Miller world doesn't always seem so eerily perfect in this book. I think it's probably as well done and as "objective" of a portrait as any mother could do for her daughter. As for the weight issues and other things, nobody in gymnastics truly ever talks about those things, and most don't find a problem with them. I didn't expect Shannon's mother too either, and wasn't suprised when she didn't discuss the subject.

This book was disappointing to me as gymnastics fan, and I thought it could have offered a lot more. It was interesting to read a book written by the mother of a gymnast, but while Claudia Miller certainly has a lot to be proud of, I got really tired of her bragging about Shannon. The way she writes simply seemed arrogant. For example, when she talks about a competition that Shannon won, she has to point out that Shannon "easily" won it or how far ahead of the other gymnasts she was. Eventually, reading this book was like listening to an annoying soccer mom talking endlessly about her star player. Then after the bragging, Claudia Miller didn't offer a lot of insight into the work and dedication behind Shannon's accomplishments, which is what I was hoping to read about. She also talks a lot about herself in the book. She throws in subtle criticisms of Bela Karoyli while dismissing Steve Nunno's sometime infantile behavior as mere "differences." She belittled Kerri Strug's accomplishment at the 1996 Olympics because it took the spotlight off of Shannon. Also, there were many minute errors throughout the book, both grammatically and factually.

I really respect Shannon Miller's accomplishments and think she was a fantastic gymnast, and I thought this book would offer a great story about how hard she worked and the sacrifices she made to achieve what she did. However, this book lacked that type of a human interest story, and it was pretty boring. As other people have commented already, this book is basically a list of Shannon's impressive accomplishments. While it's clear that she worked hard and persevered, it's difficult to relate to her or feel inspired by what she did. There are other gymnastics books that I have enjoyed much more than this one because they offer more insight into the journeys of the gymnasts with a writing style that is not so arrogant.

Although I'm a huge gymnastics fan, this book got boring rather quickly. Most interesting to me was the level of dedication which Shannon exhibited at such an early age---Claudia Miller sounds almost breathless in her recitation of the awards Shannon racked up. Unfortunately, this is little more than a blow-by-blow account of Shannon's competitions---it's far more interesting to watch them on TV than read about them! The author fails to show us anything deeper than Shannon's gymnastics and doesn't follow through with what could be interesting information (for example, the relationship between Miller and her coach as well as how Shannon's siblings dealt with her fame).

Most shocking to me was the unbelievably juvenile and controlling attitude of Steve Nunno (her coach)---Claudia Miller simply dismisses his irrational actions, often resorting to "we eventually smoothed it over".

While a dedicated Miller fan might love this book, the rest of you might just want to skip it.

I love to read gymnastics biographies; usually I don't care most of the time what gymnast I'm reading about. So, after reading several books on Shannon Miller, I picked this one up at the library and thought it might be interesting since it was by her own mother.

Yeah, I was wrong. This book is BORING. All it does is describe Shannon's competitions event-by-event, competition by competition. Yeah, maybe if you've never watched her on TV or read any other books about her, this book might be interesting, but I had a hard time picking it up and stopped reading after five minutes because it was so boring. I gave the book several chances and eventually forced myself to finish it, though.

Plus, there's nothing much about her personal life; really. All it does is talk about her gymnastics career and early life. Oh, and her mother brags about her daughter Shannon plenty enough, as well, sometimes even bragging about herself. Last time I checked, this was a biography about SHANNON, not her mother.

All in all, I didn't like it. The photos were nice, but I'd already seen many of them. For a slightly better Shannon biography, read "Shannon Miller: America's Most Decorated Gymnast," by Krista Quiner. It does a better job of detailing her career without being boring and/or overly bragging, plus it is more revealing, as well.

This book wasn't the greatest biography written about Shannon Miller. Of course, since it was written by Shannon's mother, the book does have a lot of little minor details and stories, and some of them were very interesting. (Like the one about Shannon dressing up as a grocery bag complete with the groceries one Halloween!) However, when it came to Shannon's competitions, the book had so many details about every little thing going on that it kind of became overwhelming, and sometimes I would put the book down, forget about it, and return to it days later. Needless to say, this book was a little bit boring. In fact, it's almost 300 pages long. Seems like a lot of pages for chronicling a nineteen-year-old's life! All and all, if you're looking for a good biography about Shannon, I would recommend reading "Winning Every Day" by Shannon Miller, or "Shannon Miller: America's Most Decorated Gymnast" by Krista Quiner.

I'm from the Netherlands and i love the gymnasts from the USA, but espacially Shannon, so when i found this book on internet I had to get it, and so I did, And it was great, I have reading it out in two days. It begins when Shannon is about a year of 4 and so it go's on to the olympics 1996. It's just amazing to read how she won medals while she was injured. And how she works with Steve and Peggy. I thougt they always get along together, but well you got to read this book, and then you know how hard a live of a gymnast can be. By the way, the pictures are also terrific! more then 80 pictures! just buy it.

I have read numerous biography's and autobiographys of gymnasts. This book by far gets the award. The book not only goes through Shannon Miller's gymnastics carreer, but includes various stories and fun accounts of her childhood and young adulthood. As I said I have re-read this book twice. There are inserts that have pictures that I had never seen. I would reccommend this book to anyone who wants to read a fun biography.

this book was one of the best i have ever read!!!! It is a great book that shows people of all ages that being a gymnast takes alot of work and is not easy! It is a book that you can't stop reading because its so good! It is deffinatly a page turner!!!!!!!!

This book is good for these reasons: It gives you a lot of insight as to what was going on behind the scenes of Shannon's career: how much she competed in pain, what caused the injuries, the actual lack of time she spent training fully and still competed wonderfully in competition, etc. It also was interesting to see the mother's perspective, for better or for worse. Some things written in this book are a little disturbing. For instance, Claudia Miller's (and seemingly Shannon's) fanatical Christian Science faith. As much as I am all about the freedom to practice, it seemed that she mentions leaving everything in "God's Hands" and non-religious people will get a little exasperated at the numerous references. I think there were some situations where they needed to take the situation in their OWN hands: for instance, times when Steve Nunno was a bit out of line. You may be surprised at how much of a little child Steve Nunno acted like, even with Mrs. Miller's "turn the other cheek" way of explaining his behavior and situations. Indeed I believe Steve had good intentions and is not a BAD person, it did seem that his temper overcame him too much and personally I did not agree with a lot of his methods. However, that's just MY opinion (all of which really means nothing!) I believe Shannon was a strong enough person to deal with him, though, but perhaps did not need to be subject to the borderline abuse she received. All in all, you will enjoy learning the little things that went on and what her early career was like. A definite buy!

This book by Shannon's mom was really interesting! It was a lot like her biography by Krista Quiner, except it had a lot more detail about relationships and the life of an elite level gymnast. It also talks about how having faith in her religion helped get her through the many rough times she's been through. This book had a lot of good pictures! I would recomand this book for anyone involved in gymnastics!!!