BRING YOUR ‘A’ GAME

Armed with the conviction that young athletes can benefit from “sport psychology knowledge,” Etnier, an associate professor of exercise and sport science, offers strategies for junior- and high-school athletes to reach their potential through mental training. Chapter topics include “self-talk,” energy management, burnout, confidence building and management and dealing with parents. The advice is concrete and clearly rooted in the author’s wide experience. Though activities, exercises and “key points” help to break up the text, page layout is dense and uninviting, the black-and-white illustrations cartoonish and the prose wordy and, at times, full of jargon: “Negative predictions that you make in your self-talk can create reality, and then the outcome reinforces your negative prediction.” Still, young athletes and their parents and coaches can sift through the information and find useful advice to ensure that mental training goes hand in hand with physical training. (Nonfiction. 10 & up)