TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER The Bookworm Sez Advertisement

If you're like most kids, you want to be famous.

You'd love to be on TV, maybe even get a medal or trophy. You imagine how proud everyone would be, how loud the cheers will sound, and how you'll look when accepting your prize.

Rulon Gardner probably thought the same thing once. But then frostbite caused him to lose a toe, which affected his ability to wrestle. It didn't stop him from becoming a world champion, though.

Read Gardner's story and other fascinating, fun-to-know Olympic facts and feats in the new book, "Gold Medal for Weird," by Kevin Sylvester.

Do you know what happens next summer in Beijing? Beijing, China, is the place where athletes from around the world will gather to compete in the 2008 Olympics. And you know what that means -- you'll be glued to your TV to watch some of the best put themselves to the test.

But what do you know about the Olympics? Did you know that, until recently, you had to be strictly an amateur to compete in the Games? When he was a kid, American decathlon and pentathlon winner Jim Thorpe accepted a few bucks to play baseball. After he won his medals in 1912, Olympic officials found out about his prior "salary" and they took his medals away from him. (They later gave them back.)

And speaking of medals, nobody won medals in the ancient Olympics. Winners got olive-branch wreaths and special treatment at home, including statues erected in their honor.

You might think about putting up a statue to an athlete who competed despite the odds ... like Eric Moussambani from Equatorial Guinea, who learned to swim a few months before he competed in the 100-meter freestyle swim race at the 2000 Olympics. Or Kenyan Mike Boit, a skier from a country that doesn't have any snow. Or the famous bobsled team from Jamaica, a year-round warm place where ice never forms on the ground.

From ancient Greece to future events, Summer Olympics to Winter, if you think there's only athletic excitement to the games, you need to jump, run and pole vault to get this book.

Do your kids count the days til their next favorite sporting event? Make the next 10 months race by for them. Get "Gold Medal for Weird".

Even though the title of this book is a misnomer -- there aren't many really weird things here -- kids will learn about the history of the games, facts about host cities, "wardrobe malfunctions," strange things that happened at many of the games and some possible future events they might see.

They'll also read true stories about athletes who overcame challenges large and small, all for the pursuit of a little round piece of gold at the end of a ribbon.

If your 7-and-up child is a big fan of sports, athletes or the Olympics, or if there's a budding Olympian in your household who dreams of cheers and standing on the podium, pick up a copy of "Gold Medal for Weird."

For them, this book is a true prize.

"Gold Medal for Weird" by Kevin Sylvester, Kids Can Press, $6.95, 111 pages.