Through My Eyes: A Quarterback’s Journey by Tim Tebow with Nathan Whitaker (Young Reader’s Edition)
YA Nonfiction, Published December 2011
Challenges: NetGalley Month (Jan)
Read January 2012, 216 pp
4/5 STARS
Book Blurb:
For children ages 8 & up
Meet Tim Tebow: He grew up playing every sport imaginable, but football was his true passion. Even from an early age, Tim has always had the drive to be the best player and person that he could be. Through his hard work and determination, he established himself as one of the greatest quarterbacks in the history of college football and as a top prospect in the NFL. Now, in Through My Eyes: A Quarterback’s Journey, he shares the behind-the-scenes details of his life, on and off the football field. Tim writes about his life as he chooses to live it, revealing how his Christian faith, his family values, and his relentless will to succeed have molded him into the person and the athlete he is today.
Thoughts:
I am not a huge football fan, and if I were one I am definitely a Cowboys girl. No matter your level of football fandom, it is hard to miss the success of Tim Tebow. If you love football, you are sure to love all the details and plays from his early high school football days through college at the University of Florida to his draft with the Denver Broncos. I highly recommend Through My Eyes for all young Christians and athletes. What I found most fascinating, however, were all the details that were not about playing football – so even if you’re not a huge football fan, like me, you will still love this inspirational story.
About the Young Reader’s Edition: The sentences are simple and the structure of the chapters seemed to skip around a lot – I’m assuming this is where it is glossing over some of the more detailed parts that younger readers might find boring. The biggest emphasis was on his activeness with his brothers as a kid, always running around and never sitting idle, his homeschooling lessons – always with an emphasis on the Bible and Jesus, honoring his parents and doing as they tell him, always learning and growing as a Christian and athlete, his triumphs through sports and mission work, and even overcoming dyslexia. He includes a lesson or Bible Study in every story.
Reading this Young Reader’s Edition, as an older reader, made me want to reader the “adult” version, in which I’m hoping for even more details about his childhood, his parents and siblings, and their mission trips.
Quotes:
Anyone who talks to others about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ is doing mission work.
My dad always tells us that faith is like a muscle. You trust God for the small things and when He comes through, your muscle grows. It grows whether He comes through in ways that you hoped for or not – you learn that He’s always there through good or bad. This enables you to trust God for the bigger things, in fact, for all things.
“Just like a small spark can cause a big fire,” Dad said, “the smallest part of the body, the tongue, can cause great damage when we do not control it. A wrongly chosen word can hurt a reputation, alienate a friend, or break a heart.”
Thanks to NetGalley and Zondervan for providing me with an e-copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
