Review: Twist, Tumble, Triumph

Twist, Tumble, Triumph:
The Story of Champion Gymnast Ágnes Keleti

by Deborah Bodin Cohen and Kerry Olitzky, illustrated by Martina Peluso

Kar-Ben Publishing (imprint of Lerner Publishing Group), 2025

Category: Picture Books

Reviewer: Rachel J. Fremmer

 

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This picture book jumps (get it?) right into Ágnes Keleti’s career as a gymnast, showing her training on uneven bars, the balance beam, and the vault. But World War II is raging and Ágnes lives in Budapest, Hungary. Her career as a gymnast is cut short (it seems), when Jews are banned from the gym. But Ágnes survives the war and resumes training, finally winning gold medals at the 1952 and 1956 Games, at the ages of 31 and 35, respectively. The title, while obviously referring to gymnastics moves and Ágnes’s gold medals, also has a second meaning, referring to the twists her athletic career took and the obstacles she had to overcome.

This is not quite a picture book biography. The book instead focuses on Ágnes’s career as a gymnast, as well as World War II and the antisemitism Ágnes faced. This choice makes sense given that it would be nearly impossible to compress her 103-year-long life (she died a week short of 104 in January of this year) into the 32 or even 40 pages allotted to most picture books. This means that book, necessarily, leaves a lot of questions unanswered.

Although there is a short author’s note and a photo of Ágnes doing a split at age 95(!!!) (which is sure to delight young gymnasts), there is no timeline or other information about Ágnes’s life - her two marriages, her children, her move to Israel and later return to Budapest.

The illustrations, done mostly in a palette of browns, blues, and greens, are dynamic, particularly when showing Ágnes doing gymnastics.

The Jewish content of this book is largely limited to antisemitism and the Holocaust. Ágnes was forced to pretend to be Christian to survive, while her mother and sister were able to find refuge in safe houses provided by the Swiss embassy in Budapest (a detail that was new to me). Her father, unfortunately, was killed at Auschwitz. The book neither shies away from nor overemphasizes these events and presents them matter-of-factly. They will not come as a shock to most adult readers and provide a reasonably gentle introduction for younger ones. Ágnes’s story may prove particularly resonant today, in the aftermath of October 7th.

Tumble, Twist, Triumph is a good introduction to the gymnastics career of the remarkable and too-little-known Ágnes Keleti.

 

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Reviewer Rachel J. Fremmer is an elementary school librarian and former lawyer She writes an annual round-up of the best Jewish children’s books for Tablet, the online magazine. She is a native-and-forever New Yorker and lives there with her family. She is continually inspired by the city even though apartment living means she is running out of room for her picture book collection. She was selected by PJ Library for their inaugural Picture Book Summer Camp for Emerging Writers. When she is not reading or writing, she is baking or doing crossword puzzles.