Kirkus Reviews QR Code
AT GLEASON’S GYM by Ted Lewin Kirkus Star

AT GLEASON’S GYM

by Ted Lewin & illustrated by Ted Lewin

Pub Date: Aug. 1st, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-59643-231-4
Publisher: Neal Porter/Roaring Brook

Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn, N.Y., is a training place for boxers and wrestlers from all over the world including nine-year-old Sugar Boy Younan, who is preparing for the National Silver Gloves championship. With vibrant watercolors and a spare, almost poetic text, Lewin brings alive the hubbub of varied activities with all the different sights and sounds. Beginning with the title page’s double-page spread showing the gym from the street, and then throughout the book, words like thump, tip tap and bzzzzzzzzz! are scrawled across the pictures. Along with the big, busy gym scenes are sensitive paintings of individuals and even pencil sketches. Lewin shows people of all ages, sexes, sizes and colors practicing, watching, teaching and helping: “It’s everybody’s gym.” He emphasizes the excitement and the sheer joy: “THIS IS FUN!” Well-known for his portrayal of faraway places, Lewin returns to the world he described in I Was a Teen-aged Professional Wrestler (1993) to make this distinctive introduction for even younger readers. (Picture book. 5-9)