Race for the Stars is the sixth in author-illustrator Shoo Rayner’s Olympia series of chapter books which show what life was like for ordinary children in Ancient Greece. It features Olly, whose father runs the gymnasium where the great athletes train, and who dreams of being an Olympic champion. In Race for the Stars, Olly’s sister Chloe, who has an affinity with animals, wants to enter the Junior chariot race. Though women and girls are not allowed to race, horse and chariot owner Lydia secretly helps Chloe train by night. When Chloe enters the race, she is not heavy enough, but her cousin Spiro’s dog Kerberos joins her in the chariot, and her skill and gentleness in coaxing the horse to gallop faster mean that she wins the race.

While Chloe trains, Spiro and Olly perform their tasks as apprentices to the athletes’ academy, setting up lunch for the athletes, and listening to the historian, Simonedes, tell the story of Artemis’s prowess as an archer, and her love for Orion, stung by a scorpion and placed in the stars where she visits him in the heavens. As with others in the series, Simonedes’ discussion of the myth provides a link with the action of the children: here, it is a loose link between Artemis’s skill as a hunter and charioteer, and Chloe and Lydia’s desire to join the chariot race. Though Rayner makes it clear that women could own, but not race, chariots, Chloe’s role in the race goes unremarked upon. A final page provides some ‘Olympic Facts,’ including information about why teenagers commonly were chariot racers, and about Cynisca, the Spartan chariot owner.

Race for the Stars is an educational reader for primary-school aged children, which uses large text and simple language to help new readers (see here). 

Here, Rayner combines a story about Chloe’s desire to be a chariot racer with reflection about the excitement of racing and the challenges girls faced in ancient Greece. The emphasis on Chloe’s affinity with animals underscores a gendered understanding of how girls and boys operate, and suggests a modern view of how to treat and train animals (even a fierce dog named Kerberos (after the guardian of the underworld) responds to gentle greatment). But countering the gendered presentation of gentleness, Lydia is a fierce chariot-owner, who takes her prize without a backward glance at Chloe – in this, as in other stories in the series, Rayner points out simple facts about life in Ancient Greece. As with other stories in the series (Jump for Glory), Rayner shows characters thinking about when to bend the rules, and when not to.