Peanut Goes for the Gold

PEANUT GOES FOR THE GOLD

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Pursue the things that bring you joy, not because of where you want to end up, but because of the happiness that they bring you right now. Even if other people don’t understand your rhythmic gymnastics journey, the only person who really needs to understand it is you. —JVN For Liza, for giving me my little peanut. —GR

Copyright © 2020 by Jonathan van Ness All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address HarperCollins Children’s Books, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007. www.harpercollinschildrens.com ISBN 978-0-06-294100-8 The artist used Adobe Photoshop to create the digital illustrations for this book.

Typography by Chelsea C. Donaldson 20 21 22 23 24 PC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 v First Edition

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PEANUT

GOES FOR THE GOLD

JONATHAN VAN NESS pictures by Gillian Reid

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Peanut has their own way of doing things.

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Peanut loves doing cartwheels while on the basketball court

and having banana pancakes on their birthday instead of cake . . .

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. . . and cutting their own hair as they Hula-Hoop.

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Sometimes people think Peanut’s weird . . .

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. . . but more often, friends wind up joining in the fun.

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