In 1967, Moe was thirteen years old when she broke the world record for the women's marathon. At this time women often had to run surreptitiously (she ran alongside Kathrine Switzer) if we could run at all, for men thought our uteruses would fall out if we ran any distance.
Moe just loved running. She started to keep up with her brothers and despite her height and being younger, she quickly outran them. Her parents were endlessly supportive, finding her a team and a coach and going to great lengths to get her to meets across Canada. Once her coach hired a private plane and her father raced her and other girls across town to fly directly from one meet to another across the country. Moe ran and ran and ran. It was beautiful, impressive, even intimidating. And then she ran herself out. The best runner of her generation was completely burnt out before she was twenty and quit and sport. Decades later, her own daughter asked her grandmother if her mother had ever run. Moe's mother said she'd better ask her herself. Luckily Moe's mother also had kept exhaustive scrapbooks.

This review is a part of Kid Konnection, hosted by Booking Mama, a collection of children's book-related posts over the weekend.
This book is published by Farrar Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers, a division of Macmillan, my employer.
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