Friedrich Wilhelm Müller loved athletics as a boy but "playing sports required a strong, healthy body" and Friedrich was skinny and frail. Though he was often "too sick to play," he remained undaunted by his physical restrictions and played sports, determined to be a healthy and strong person. As Friedrich grew older, his love of athletics never dimmed. Though his father wanted him to attend university and focus on a career, Friedrich could not ignore his drive to be active--he decided to join the circus.
When circus life didn't work out for Friedrich, his journey toward being "the strongest man in the world" began in earnest. He trained as a bodybuilder, changed his name to Eugen Sandow and soon became a professional strongman. With time, work and some (possibly slippery) performance tricks, Eugen gained world fame and launched the first organized bodybuilding contest, ever-so-humbly awarding the winner a statue of himself. Eugen Sandow's exercise and diet regimens are used to this day and the prize for the Mr. Olympia bodybuilding competition is still the (slightly updated) Sandow.
Don Tate (Whoosh! Lonnie Johnson's Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions), who used to be a bodybuilder himself, treats the exceptional life of Eugen Sandow with appreciation and respect while making sure to note in the ample back matter that much of what people today know about Sandow came from the man himself--a man who constantly sought perfection and sometimes stretched the truth. Tate's biography of one of the first international sports stars is welcoming to the young reader with approachable text and rich digital illustrations. And, for the budding athlete, there is even a page that teaches different strength building exercises. --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness